Sitting quietly in the living room of Mary's quaint home near the University, I asked Mary if after her years of hard work, she feels frustrated that sometimes it seems that we're not making much headway. "Literacy workers make differences on a small scale," she responded initially, "and that's OK. Literacy would need a much larger public movement to be able to made a difference on a larger scale." She paused to think more about my question, then continued: "I don't really get frustrated, but it doesn't excite me to hear, for example, throne speeches that say, 'We're going to eradicate illiteracy by the year 2000' or reduce it by 50% or increase high school completion by a certain percentage. That just denies or ignores all the other kinds of issues that are facing us. Those statements ignore the fact that people are going to need opportunities to learn and develop all the rime - when it is appropriate for them, not when someone else says it's rime."

"And it doesn't excite me to hear other sorts of statements made by people in leadership positions, government or otherwise, mat really oversimplify the issue, and/or romanticize it. A lot of media reports in the last year have focused on individuals and their success stories. I really applaud the changes for the individuals but those stories tend to romanticize the accomplishments and really play down the fact that learning something that hasn't been easy to learn in the past, while dealing with everything else that's going on in a person's life, isn't always an easy haul."

Mary's latest interest and involvement in literacy has been with the learners of literacy programs. She has been working closely with the Learner's Group, a group that started to form at The Literacy Conference. Mary helped to organize workshops and activities for the students who attended the Conference and was pleased to see how much the students enjoyed getting together and sharing ideas and experiences.

Working with learners has also raised some questions for Mary. "There is definitely a move to involve learners and students more in literacy programming but there's a lot we need to do yet. It's really related to some larger questions like - 'What role do people who are educated and privileged play in the literacy movement t?' I used to think we have a role because we have certain skills and we have been able to benefit from the system (and there is some responsibility to make those skills available to others) but what's the role of a white middle-class person in working with Native people? At some point we have to realize and trust that people can do things themselves. We can act as a support but maybe it's time for us to step back and rethink what our role as literacy workers really is."

SYLVIA OBRIGEWITSCH is truly a "people person"; gentle, yet energetic, she is easily able to establish a rapport with everyone she meets. She first became involved in literacy when she volunteered as a tutor for Alice at the Learning Centre in 1986. Sylvia is now the coordinator of the John Howard Society Plus Program on Jasper Avenue in downtown Edmonton.