Literacy Outreach Coordination

The Literacy Outreach Coordinator engages with the community through committees, projects, events, and partnership initiatives. This helps the Society to:

• Identify literacy gaps
• Be responsive to new community needs
• Avoid service overlap
• Develop awareness and support for literacy
• Recruit new volunteers
• Share information about our services

The Literacy Outreach Coordinator chairs and participates on community committees that help inform the direction we take. The Early Learning Action Team connects organizations serving the early years, identifies gaps, and shares resources to better serve the learning needs of young families. We also sit at the North Okanagan Early Years table.

The Adult Literacy Service Providers Network works together to better serve adults, newcomers, and seniors. This network identified the need for Financial Literacy and is working on strategies to build more capacity and opportunities in the community. 

The Literacy Society of the North Okanagan has partnered with the Vernon Health Unit to provide “books for babies and kindies” at their immunization clinics. Families are presented with a new high-quality book to share with their little one and are encouraged to read daily with their children to support their language and literacy development. 

Thanks to generous donations from individual and community donors such as Nixon Wenger, Kalamalka Rotary, and the Community Foundation of the North Okanagan, thousands of books have been distributed over the years.

The Literacy Society looks for ways to celebrate Family Literacy Week during the third week of January each year. 

We have partnered with the Okanagan Regional Library and downtown businesses to offer “Story-Window” Walks. Pages of a story are divided and placed in storefront windows. Families or children’s groups get a map from the library or on our website and walk store to store reading the story and answering “skill-testing” questions along the way. Upon completion they can enter into a prize draw. 

Hundreds of children and adults learned “How to Catch a Yeti”, travelled with a mouse to find a “Gruffalo”, and found the “Way Home for Wolf “. 

Look for us at other community events like Canada Day or the Children’s Festival.

The Outreach Coordinator is working with community partners to build capacity for financial literacy within organizations and for the public. 

We are currently researching best practices, gathering resources, identifying potential facilitators, organizing workshops, and seeking grant funds and volunteers to support this important endeavor.

We have formed a partnership with the Launch Financial Education Society  in Kelowna to connect with their online programming and other programs as capacity allows. 

• ABC Life Literacy Canada
• Prosper Canada
• Okanagan Regional Library E-learning Resources
• NexusBC Community Resource Centre Connect Program
• Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada
• Government of Canada Financial Consumer Agency
• Bank of Canada Financial Education Resources
• Canadian Bankers Association
• Credit Counseling Society
• Junior Achievers

You can often find the Literary Society at community events such as:

• Volunteer Fair
• Seniors Fair and Senior’s Week
• Children’s Festival
• Community Expo
• Sunshine Festival
• Canada Day
• Vernon Farmers Market

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Province of British Columbia through the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, the Postmedia Raise-a-Reader Campaign, and Decoda Literacy Solutions.