4-4 The commitment of the programs that agree to participate in the second stage

The programs that would be considered and encouraged to participate are those that indicate a willingness and an ability to:

• commit themselves to an up-front, woman-positive activity and
• approach this activity, for a period of time, as action research.

A deliberate effort will be made to ensure that programs involved in the research project come from a variety of geographic locations, program perspectives and community sizes.

Organized and active outreach will be done using the extensive CCLOW membership to facilitate the participation of community-based programs, one-to-one volunteer programs, workplace programs, bridging programs, immigrant women's programs (including mother tongue or English as a Second Language), union programs, and college and school board programs.

The participating literacy workers within the program

Two women - two literacy workers or, in some cases perhaps, one literacy worker and one other program participant (student, worker, board member, volunteer) - will need to agree to be the contacts in the program or organization. They will commit themselves to be involved in the national workshops and in the planning, implementation, documentation and evaluation of the activity within their program or organization.

As part of the planning for the activity, the contact women would receive assistance in negotiating the time for participation as part of their job description. It is important to note that the time required for the research component of the activity-the half-day per week spent on documentation, evaluation and the participation in three training workshops-will receive financial support of $ 150/day. The resources and salary for the actual activity will need to come out of the program.

Training for action research with woman-positive activities

The contact women will be brought together from interested programs and organizations to look at their own experience as women and as literacy program participants.

In the first workshop they will be given an opportunity and the tools to reflect upon their experience and understand how that experience connects with the experience of other women-those present and those available to us through written stories of their lives. Moving to an analysis of how our experience as women fits within our particular programs and organizations, our communities, and our political and social realities, we can begin to develop a vision of how we would like to work with other participants in our literacy programs and communities.

At this point, we will begin to imagine a research project within each setting that will provide for a consciously woman-positive activity that could be used as a catalyst for change within the program and the larger community. We will discuss how to plan, implement, document and evaluate such an activity within the context of action research-research that will ultimately be useful to the particular program and the general literacy community, as well as to the individuals involved.

The program's agreement to take part in the research activity

The literacy workers, the literacy students and the administration (management or board) will all need to agree to a statement of intent around the activity, recognizing it as a woman-positive activity and also as a piece of action/participatory research.

All the participants must be willing to see the activity as potentially changing the program as a whole, not simply as a way to have a positive impact on individual students or workers. The women's voices that emerge from the experience must be seen as tools to re-structure the program so that it is more inclusive of this experience.