Family literacy is such a busy field these days! Check this page out regularly to learn more about interesting ideas that are circulating about family literacy, what the latest research may be telling us, or for stories that will inspire you! This is also where we will recommend links to other sites and agencies working in the field, on-line discussion groups to join, resources to check out, and upcoming events and conferences.

If you have ideas or information that you would like to contribute to this page, just email us and we’ll be in touch.

February 2004

Update # 3 on Action for Family Literacy Ontario (AFLO)

Action for Family Literacy Ontario (AFLO) was formed in May 2003.  AFLO is an Ontario Literacy Coalition working group that came about as the result of a call to action from delegates at Family Literacy Matters!, a symposium hosted by the OLC in October 2002. Members are all volunteers with the exception of one OLC staff person. Delegates charged the OLC with setting up a provincial working group to provide provincial leadership for family literacy.

AFLO had an initial strategy planning session in May. Since our initial meeting, there have been many teleconferences and one face-to-face meeting in Kingston in September. We have been busy moving forward on the action plan we developed in our initial session based on the direction the symposium delegates gave us.

Summer and early fall were busy for AFLO members. Over the summer, the group worked diligently on a draft vision, mission, roles and definitions statement to capture the essence of AFLO and its work. At the same time, we put a call out for AFLO advisors, a group of up to 20 people from across the province with an interest in family literacy who could give feedback on AFLO’s work. We had a great response to the call and now have a group of advisors representing different sectors and a good cross-section of the province. In October, we sent our draft statement out to our advisors for feedback. We got positive and constructive feedback on the statement. We have reviewed the feedback and are now in the process of incorporating it into a revised version. The revised statement will go back to the advisors and out to the larger family literacy field including symposium delegates for further feedback and validation. Many thanks to AFLO advisors for all their work!

In the meantime, we have been working on other action items that are part of our strategic plan. We have developed a discussion paper on marketing and communication and a sketch of a plan that ties in well with our AFLO statement.  In the future, we want to develop a brochure and publicize family literacy and the work of AFLO through a web site and conferences for members.

We are in the process of conducting a literature search of best practice documents in family literacy, identifying existing methods of measuring the impact of family literacy, and developing an evaluation strategy to measure the impact of our own work. Moreover, AFLO members are involved in the OLC conference planning for Literacyworks!  June 2004 and the Foundational Training for Family Literacy  Institute that will be held in July 2004. In the near future, we hope to produce a position paper on family literacy in Ontario.

Many thanks and appreciation to the National Literacy Secretariat for financial support of this project.