Literacy programs are at risk in Prince George due to funding cuts from the Ministry of Education.
"We found out last week. We didn't sense this coming," said the city's literacy outreach co-ordinator Helen Domshy who had her annual budget reduced from about $30,000 to approximately $13,000.
The money was channeled through a provincial agency called Decoda Literacy Solutions but it originates with the Ministry of Education.
"It could be that this kills the program, which affects a lot of additional programs this office supports," Domshy said. She runs the program out of her own home so there was no overhead, all of the funding was applied to her hours of work and contributions to learning initiatives.
"It's like they know I'm semiretired and expect me to volunteer just because they know how important this is to me," she said. "But I will have to consider other options, and at $13,000 who is going to step in instead? And what will you be able to do on so few hours?"
Among other duties, Domshy's work provided resources to aboriginal literacy and parenting skills in conjunction with a Native Friendship Centre program, contributed to the Elizabeth Fry Society's Mother Goose program getting groups of parents together for reading time to children, paid for tutoring through the Learning Difficulties Centre, aided the Child Development Centre's delivery of the Ready, Set, Learn program, helped the John Howard Society and Prince George Regional Correctional Centre to better educate convicts, helped do Kitchen Table Learning which was face-to-face home literacy support for kids, and other community initiatives.
"The loss of even one resource for literacy is not acceptable. Statistics in Canada indicate that over 40 per cent of Canadians lack the necessary skills to thrive in modern society," she said. "People with improved literacy skills are far more able to be fully participating citizens, both within the community and the economy in general. Literacy impacts our lives in many areas: our health, our ability to handle our finances, our involvement in civic affairs, and indeed, our life."
She said the reason for the cutbacks, as expressed to her, was the need to balance the provincial budget during these times of financial restraint. She said she didn't fault the government for attempting fiscal prudence but saw little financial responsibility in saving this small amount of money when reductions in literacy, especially to those already struggling, would only cost the economy exponentially more.
Domshy said it was local MLA Shirley Bond who strongly advocated for the start of this program about six years ago and "has done some wonderful things for us, I know she is supportive," but there seems no way of stopping the cuts.
Furthermore, the program had to report annually to School District 57 for oversight so the money always had to be spent responsibly and be itemized to the dollar. And when she explained the program to the Select Standing Committee on Finance (an all-parties team of MLAs that tours B.C. communities annually gathering suggestions for the provincial budget), "all we did was ask for government to just maintain funding but the committee actually recommended we have improved funding," she said.
