Headlines/June 28, 1996

, Partners in Learning — a unique literacy project — wins
Betty Urquhart Community Service award

Partnership and cooperation are a key part
of any literacy training program. In the
case of the Partners in Learning program,
the partners doing the cooperating are an
unusual combination.

Partners in Learning matches inmates
from Ferndale minimum security
institution in Mission with students from
four alternative schools in the Mission
and Abbotsford school districts, The
inmates, who are tainied as tutors, work
with the students on academic skills and
also on values development.

UCFV honoured Glenn Fiett, the
coordinator of Partners in Learning, with
its Betty Urquhart Community Service
award this year.

Flett is a prison success story. A repeat
offender, he received a life sentence in
1978 for the murder of a Hudson’s Bay
employee who tried to stop him and an
accomplice during a hold-up. After
becoming a Christian three years later in
Kent Institution, he’s now focusing on
positive accomplishments, “after years
spent wasting my life doing negative
things.”

He started working with at-risk kids
while still incarcerated at Ferndale.

“T wanted to help youth to understand
. the problems of making the wrong
choices, Myself and another fellow
Started visiting the alternative schools.
They liked us to come, but they wanted
us to do something specific,” instead of
just talking about life choices.

Flett and three others, Trudy Archie,

. Heather Hausch, and Zeke Duerksen,
came up with the idea for literacy
tutoring. UCFV literacy coordinator
Wendy Watson drafted a funding
proposal, and a steering committee was
formed, comprised of various project
partners (Mission Literacy Association,
Abbotsford Literacy Association, School
Districts 75 and 34, Ferndale Institution,
and UCFV).

Now 10 low-risk inmates travel
regularly to‘four alternative schools,
working one-on-one with the students.
Flett says it pays off for both the students
and the tutors.

“A number of the kids have really
benefitted, and their teachers are really

Board Chair Noel Hall presents award
to Glenn Flett

supportive. It’s more than just literacy
training, it’s also moral education. The
tutors share the stories of their lives, and
the mistakes they’ve made. Often the
students are on the borderline, and they
don’t often hear the straight goods from
people who’ve had these experiences.

“TI wanted to help youth to
understand the problems of
making the wrong choices...
after years spent wasting my
life doing negative things.”

—Glenn Flett

“As for the tutors, it’s hard to say for
sure that they’re more successful because
they’ve been involved in the program
since they’re very carefully screened and
most of them are very low risk anyway,

but they do feel acceptance from these

kids right away. All of them have told me
that it meant a lot to them to be involved

. in the program.”

As for himself, Flett is happy to have
played a major role in the success of the
program. “It’s a very positive thing for
me. It’s the neatest thing to see five
different organizations working smoothly
together on the project.”

Flett won’t be formally involved with
the Parnters in Learning program after
this year. His main pursuit now is
working with long-term and/or chronic
offenders in a program called LINC
(Long-term Inmates Now in the

Community), which is funded through a
contract with Correctional Service of
Canada (RHQ Pacific Region). He hopes
that the Partners in Learning program will
go on without him for a long time, and
has trained a successor, Marleau Becquet.

Other literacy partnership projects and
their steering committee members were
also nominated for the UCFV Betty
Urquhart Community Service award.
They are Families in Motion, an
innovative family literacy program for
women and their preschool-aged children,
and Read to Me, a project which involves
training community volunteers who then
read to kindergarten and Grade One
children.

In Families in Motion, participants
meet twice a week in community

. locations. The adults are offered

upgrading, computer literacy, family
reading, parenting skills, volunteer work
opportunities, and interective ime with
their chiidren. The children are offered a
full preschool program. Partners in this
program are the Vancouver Foundation,
Chilliwack Community Services, the
Skwah Band, School District 33, the
Fraser Valley East Literacy Association,
the Fraser Valley Regional Library, and
UCFV. .

Volunteers with the Read to Me
program visit local schools and are paired
with one or more children for two
half-hour reading sessions per week.
Founding partners of this program were
School District 33, the Fraser Valley
Regional Library, the Kiwanis Club of
Chilliwack, and UCFV. The Kiwanis club
currently funds and coordinates the
program.