PROVIDING LITERACY INFORMATION THROUGH THE WORLD

A. ONE FINAL TASK

This will be the final Weekly Management Bulletin for the year. Your area coordinators and I will undoubtedly be contacting you a few more times on an ad hoc basis as we put together a final report for the year. But for now, once you send in your zone’s final report (to your area coordinator with a copy to me), you have completed your zone assignment ---- WITH ONE EXCEPTION.
THE ONE EXCEPTION is that when the final report for the RI Literacy Resource Group is finished at the end of July I would like you to send a copy to your district contacts.

B. AN INVITATION TO CONTRIBUTE POLICY INFORMATION FOR THE FINAL REPORT
As you will recall, the mission of the RILRG was to motivate clubs and districts to do more in terms of literacy projects than they had been doing when the resource group was established in 2005. We did that through four “avenues” of service:

1. We found out what clubs and districts were doing in terms of finding and meeting literacy needs in the local community and internationally.

2. We sought to make the rest of the clubs in the world aware of what their peers were doing. The idea, course, was to learn and apply the lessons from Rotary peers.

3. We sought to encourage action not only by providing information but also by establishing standards of excellence and providing recognitions.

4. We sought to facilitate actions by such means as offering planning guidelines, suggesting projects, posting useful information on our web site, and providing Literacy award templates on line.

When you think about it, you realize that the RI Literacy Resource Group was a ROTARY INFORMATION GROUP rather than an ACTION GROUP. But the final goal was club and district actions and the means to that goal was creating awareness.
The FINAL REPORT will include a lengthy appendix highlighting specific literacy project success stories of clubs and districts. They will be presented in a format allowing immediate transfer to PROJECT LINK and EVERY SCHOOL A STAR. You have already provided us with numerous examples. But feel free to send in additional examples as long as they get to me by July 15th.
The FINAL REPORT will also include empirical evidence and opinions regarding what worked and what did not work in terms of the strategies used by the RILRG. Please feel free to send your own thoughts in to me and give me your permission to use them. That invitation applies both to those of you who had successful experiences with your district contacts and those who felt frustrated by lack of responses from your districts.

C. LATEST INFORMATION ABOUT LITERACY WITHOUT THE RILRG

It is still unclear as to who will pick up the tasks undertaken by the RI Literacy Resource Group next year. The proposal for a LITERACY ACTION GROUP will be reviewed within the next two weeks and might be approved at that time. The RI staff will continue to provide District Literacy Award templates on-line as well as most of the other resources currently posted at www.rotary.org/literacy.

There is some talk about establishing a literacy blog and involving any and all of you who are interested. And at least two zones directors have been approached about setting up a zone literacy committee and/or coordinator who would basically do what you zone coordinators currently do. But to the best of my knowledge literacy will no longer be treated as a special emphasis at the level of the RI president as has been the case for the past 5 years. That puts the responsibility back on the clubs and districts. Hopefully, a respectable number of those will be up to the task.
Of those the clubs and districts which are up to the challenge, many will have their zone and area literacy coordinators to thank that ability.
Let’s celebrate at the RI Convention in Montreal. I’ll be waiting to thank you in person at the RILRG booth in the House of Friendship.
Richard Hattwick
RI World Literacy Coordinator
June 2010
PHOTOS: Literacy outside RILRG, it is hard yet to see beyond the clouds; Children from Guinea Bissau, recipients of Literacy and Heath Care in Portugal Through ICC (Intercountry Committees in RI); the Project Escolinhas in Niassa, Mozambique, D. 1970 initiative potentiated by ICC (2 photos);  Literacy, we will find the better wind; Project Telemedicine in Cape Verde from Associação Saúde em Português, important health and Literacy project, potentiated by ICC in São Vicente island.