Winners of the Sweet Letters Challenge. From left to right are: Allan Wuorinen, Tammy King, Keith McNiven, Melissa Frati and Jason Ducharme from The Learning Co-op with the NPSCDSB. Submitted photo.
Illiteracy is a ”very big deal” in the North Bay area says Jane Jackson, the Executive Director of the North Bay Literacy Council.
In fact she says “One in four people here have issues with literacy”.
So an awareness campaign was designed by the Council.
The group sent local businesses a jar of Alpha Bits cereal and challenged employees to create as many words as possible with them. Twenty-two accepted the challenge.
Pictures of participants were uploaded to its website http://northbayliteracycouncil.ca/ with winners getting bragging rights as “North Bay’s Wordiest Staff”, and a pair of tickets to its Halloween Bash.
“People had so much fun we’ve been asked to make it an annual event,” Jackson added.
The winner was The Learning Co-op of the Nipissing Parry Sound Catholic District School Board.
“We had a great time.” Said Monica Marier.
Her group of five adult learners spent about an hour to come up with 55 words.
“We play a lot of scrabble. It’s a staple in our program so it was an extension of our games,” admitted Marier to BayToday.
Chris Dawson joins me as we attempt the literacy challenge.
Meanwhile Jackson is very pleased with the results.
“The positive is it brings awareness to literacy issues and highlights programs that can help.”
Finishing second was the Community Counselling Centre with 53 words, followed by the Multicultural Centre with 51.
The idea has been picked up by a similar group in Dartmouth Nova Scotia.
