Youth and Seniors Literacy Project
The NWT Seniors’ Society in partnership with the GNWT’s Department of Education Culture and Employment has sponsored Youth and Seniors’ Literacy Events throughout the NWT.
The main purpose of these project is to provide opportunities for youth and seniors to work together on a variety of literacy related events at the community level.
2011/2012
Funding is available for Youth and Seniors Literacy related events beginning during Literacy Week (September 26 – October 2, 2011) and ending on or before March 31, 2012. These events would bring seniors and youth together in a variety of different literacy activities. This year, the focus will be on projects that see elders and seniors in a mentoring role with young people doing literacy work and activities where all participants learn together and have fun doing it.
Funding Guidelines
Funding may be spent on wages for project facilitators, project materials (learning materials, food or door prizes), hall rental, and transportation to the event. Projects will be funded up to a maximum of $1500, however, depending on the project and amount of proposals received, proposals over that amount may be considered. Proposals may be submitted using the proposal template.
Some examples of acceptable projects are:
- Develop health supports for Seniors, such as short dramas on health issues that Seniors encounter. Post these productions on a local website.
- Create family trees, seeing how far back you can go. Document some of the stories you hear about different family/community members. Take pictures of people and places of the different families and where they lived. Post them on a community website. Get permission first.
- Put together a community cookbook with recipes from Elders; Cook up some of the recipes and have a community feast to celebrate. Make a digital copy of your cookbook and post it on your centre’s website.
- Set up a workshop on learning how to write in the Aboriginal languages – the Elders could provide correct pronunciation, and youth do the spelling once they learn how to spell in their language.
- Create and play literacy games such as AEIO Bingo, Jeopardy, Memory and Charades in the Aboriginal languages. Search on the internet for websites that have literacy games in Aboriginal Languages, and try to adapt them to your language.
- Meet with Elders to see what types of literacy supports they would like in their community. Such supports would help the Elders to maintain independent living.
- Hold storytelling sessions by Elders, and document the stories (written and/or audio-visual). With permission from the elders, post their stories to your centre’s website.
- Interview Elders on the history of your community, and some interesting things they remember from their own lives or what was told to them.
- Create a photo documentary of Elders in your community.
The above list is intended to provide examples and projects will not be limited to those listed. Please also refer to our event planning guide for and the How-To-Kits on the NWT Literacy Council website http://www.nwt.literacy.ca/famlit_res.htm for more ideas on events you can plan with seniors.
Templates
2011 Reporting Template - 2011 Proposal Template
Previous Years
2010/2011
In 2010/2011, the two key objectives were:
- Promote literacy based activities at the community level that bring youth and seniors together to learn from each other;
- Explore the use of information technology as a tool for youth and seniors to use in literacy activities.
Therefore, this year, those projects that had an information technology component or focus were given priority. A total of 19 projects were completed, many of which had an information technology focus or component. Originally, three other projects approved by the project review committee were not, for a variety of reasons, carried out by the applicant group.
The following communities were represented in the distribution of funding to the various groups and organizations: Fort Smith, Fort Simpson, Hay River, Yellowknife, Fort Resolution, Wekweeti, Uluhaktok, Tuktoyaktuk, Tulita, Dettah/Ndilo, Smith’s Landing, Deline and Fort McPherson. Reports have been received from most of the projects. Pictures taken at events as well as a summary of each of the project activities will be posted on this site in the near future.
