Literacy is not the work of one organization, one classroom or one family. It is a shared responsibility, built through the everyday efforts of people who believe that every person in British Columbia deserves the skills, confidence and opportunity to participate fully in community life.

Today, Decoda Literacy Solutions launches Your Gift. Their Next Chapter., our Literacy Month campaign.

Decoda Literacy Solutions believes lasting change is local, and it takes a community to make literacy support possible.

Across the province, Decoda supports 101 Literacy Outreach Coordinators and their community partners in more than 400 communities. They listen to local needs, bring organizations together and help build programs that reflect the lives of the people who use them.

The work happens in libraries, family resource centres, neighbourhood houses, schools and a multitude of informal gathering places. What matters is that it is trusted, accessible and shaped by community.

That trust begins with learners, who set their own goals and place their trust in a program. It is carried forward by Literacy Outreach Coordinators, educators, tutors and volunteers, whose skill and generosity turn good local ideas into welcoming programs.

It is sustained by donors, sponsors and government partners, whose support provides the funding, materials, training and time required to keep that work going.

You can see this approach in Kamloops, where SMART and HIPPY support newcomer mothers and young children, Williams Lake’s Fostering Literacy program, Chetwynd’s Flashlight Fridays and the Downtown Eastside Tech Café in Vancouver.

To find support closer to home, visit our BC Literacy Program Map.

Your gift helps a learner to write their own future. It helps keep the next page at their fingertips. It supports the local people and programs that make learning possible at the moment it is most needed.

As we launch this campaign, thank you to everyone who donates, sponsors, volunteers, shares a post, starts a conversation or tells someone where to find help.

Together, we can build a British Columbia in which no one is left behind because literacy support is out of reach.

Make your gift through literacymonth.ca.