The Reach "Literacy/Disability Public Awareness Project" with Canada's Snowbirds.

• This is a descriptive explanation of the Reach initiative to enlist a larger constituency of support for community based literacy and disability activities. There's a lot of "how-to" and "what not to do" in this.
• These pages explain the rationale, the process and the practical considerations involved in developing this public awareness initiative with Canada's Snowbirds.

The Rationale Behind the Project

Following the Cedarglenn Declaration, the Government of Canada approved a social development strategy based on the belief that a confederation of interests (people and their organizations), has the capacity to accomplish far more working together, than it would have with each member organization acting alone. Today, the National Literacy Secretariat believes that, without such collaboration, their messages would reach only about three in seven people who could benefit by improving their literacy skills.

Reach understands this concept and offers value-added support to community services in a variety of ways, as part of its goal to make "Equality for All" a Canadian reality. Over the past 20 years, Reach has pioneered new ways of responding to emerging social issues, an example of which is access to justice for people with low literacy skills

The Board of Directors at Reach works with leaders from every sector of the marketplace, (e.g. business, labour, voluntary groups, and professional organizations) because they recognize the importance of multisectoral collaboration in advancing a comprehensive Canadian social development agenda.

Often, funding and support organizations define their mandates on the basis of specific social issues. Reach recognizes the administrative value of this approach; but we also recognize the complexity and interrelationships that defy such "horizontal management".  Networking and collaboration have always been imperative considerations in our work!

While Reach's principal focus is on lawyer referral services to the disability community, Reach has pioneered several ancillary initiatives. Work with the AIDS community, people addressing family violence, mental health services and literacy promotion are examples of recent collaborative efforts at the community level. This project with Canada's Snowbirds is our first attempt to attract support for a social issue from an established national icon, and ultimately, in co-operation with leading literacy organizations such as The Movement for Canadian Literacy.