This guidebook is the result of the Strengthening Rural Canada-Renforcer les communautés rurales du Canada Project. The project was a comprehensive study about the human and social capital of rural, small town and remote communities in Canada. The initiative investigated the connections between human capital and rural growth in communities. For the research project, the communities of Gold River and Salmo in British Columbia, Rosetown and The Town of Hudson Bay in Saskatchewan, and Hearst and Kapuskasing in Ontario prepared literacy and essential skills plans. The Ontario communities are mainly Francophone.

This guidebook describes the process that these pilot communities used for literacy and essential skills planning over the course of a year. Also, the project and this guidebook were informed by annual place-based community planning for literacy in over one hundred communities in British Columbia. That planning process has been going on since 2004.