3. Another factor underlying participation in the Project was its potential for making a significant impact on awareness of violence as a critical social issue and on the capacity of practitioners to address the effects of violence. It afforded an opportunity to strengthen practice such that it would be more safe, holistic, effective and relevant to peoples' life experiences. Involvement with other practitioners in the pursuit of learning was seen as a means of generating a collective consciousness and decreasing the sense of isolation that many practitioners feel in their work.

I think it will have a significant impact. It's an amazing project. Literacy workers will feel better equipped to work in practical ways with people in our programs. Hopefully, the legacy will spread beyond this group. We need to raise awareness about these issues.

Literacy coordinators come from a lot of areas of life and bring different experiences. The Project can offer a way that I can be more effective and also prepare tutors to work differently. The work is quite isolating—we all do our own things. So the Project is important in offering an opportunity for more of us to have a common understanding.

This is a subject that needs to be discussed and brought to the public light more. Many times, people feel helpless in knowing how to deal with violence and those of us in education roles need to be very aware of issues, public feelings and ways to help those in violent situations.

Through this Project, we can develop a body of knowledge that can be integrated into literacy practice and other fields.

Learning about Outcomes of VALTA

Although the evaluation had a number of goals, the key focus was on learning about the outcomes of the Project; in other words, what difference did the VALTA Project make for the participants and their programs? All of the participants were able to name important outcomes that they attributed to being involved in the VALTA Project. While the outcomes were many and varied, we feel that they are captured by the following major categories.