Ideally, I should also have been able to work with advisory committee members, giving them information about the programs, the women, and the way in which we talked about CCLOW as a feminist organization sponsoring program based research about woman-positive literacy activities. As it happened, funding uncertainties and our desire to have at least one national workshop resulted in unfinished conversations about participatory action research, feminist agendas, role of advisory committee members, and the term "woman-positive."

Aisla Thomson, Executive Director of CCLOW, says that the organization's experience with working relationships between volunteers and paid researchers had always followed a traditional model and, unfortunately, they did not attempt to explore the boundaries of a participatory research process with this project. "Upon reflection," Aisla says, "perhaps a more integrative approach to the direction of the research in phase two, with everyone involved acting in a participatory role should have been adopted." The question, "What is the role of an advisory committee in a participatory research process?" may be one for future debates and research.

In October, CCLOW received a cheque from the National Literacy Secretariat that would support the project's work during this fiscal year. Two women from each program could now attend the first workshop, just four weeks away. CCLOW's Dianne Palachik had looked after the logistics, booking a retreat centre outside Winnipeg. Jenny, Kate, and I had begun to talk about possible agenda items during the Salt Spring planning meeting in June. We developed these ideas further during a teleconference call in October. In the week before the workshop, we met for two days to set the agenda and design a process.

Our goals for the workshop included: understanding this project as a piece action research; discussing possible woman-positive activities; anticipating how these activities might unfold; and building a sense of trust and community. We also wanted to become more aware of ourselves as women, as gendered people, and we wanted to explore what such an awareness might mean for our work. In many ways, these goals described the entire eighteen-month research process- and we planned to accomplish, or at least introduce, them during our first four days together.

2-3 The first workshop

As the thirty women attending this workshop began to arrive at St. Benedict' retreat centre outside Winnipeg, one of the meeting rooms filled up with photographs, posters, pamphlets, and writing from the different programs. We set up tables for favourite learning materials and teaching guides. A tape recorder played music that women had brought. Slowly, we began to meet each other and talk. Most did not know anyone aside from the other woman representing their program - and sometimes, these two women did not know each other very well. In a few cases, women met old friends and renewed acquaintances.