Literacy Month Offers the Chance to Support Literacy and Empower Communities
Fun fact: September is Literacy Month in British Columbia — including New Westminster, following an official proclamation by city council.
What does this mean? Every year, Decoda Literacy Solutions leads a province-wide awareness and fundraising campaign known as Literacy Month. Funds raised go towards supporting community-based literacy programs and initiatives across the province. Your donation, or participation in a community activity, could help another person begin their next chapter!
Literacy matters, and here at NWPL, we believe that supporting literacy improves the lives of New Westminster residents. And you, the community, recognizes our efforts. According to a recent report from the Community Advisory Assembly, NWPL was identified as a “literacy support, providing access to diverse materials, fostering a love of reading, and offering a wide range of programs and resources for all age groups that support different types of literacy.”
- the installation of a self-service kiosk and holds locker at the Anvil Centre, which improves access to library materials for patrons who live or work downtown
- a reconfiguration of our public computer area at Main Branch, which positively impacts the user experience and digital literacy of our public-computer users, and
- the introduction of an Adult Summer Reading Club with our successful Kids Summer Reading Club, which led to many parents ending up reading elbow-to-elbow with their children.
Libraries and literacy go hand-in-hand. This September, we encourage you to support literacy, yours or someone else’s, and wish you a happy Literacy Month.
Literacy in British Columbia
• More than 700,000 British Columbians have significant challenges with literacy.
• 45% of British Columbians aged 16 to 65 may have difficulty understanding newspapers, following instruction manuals, reading health information and other daily living tasks.
• 52% of British Columbians aged 16 to 65 may have difficulty calculating interest on a car loan, using information on a graph, calculating medicine dosage and other daily living tasks.
– Statistics Canada