Literacy funding slashed – Prince George Citizen

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.