Session 101 on “Tips and Tools for Building Collaborative Partnerships” was particularly insightful. I was interested in this topic because, as the workshop descriptor states, almost every new project or initiative involves some level or form of partnership and collaboration. All civil society organizations and agencies need to be aware of the importance of partnerships as well as the elements and dynamics of effective partnerships.

The presentation by Anne Ramsay of Learning Tree Consulting was excellent and covered all the important aspects of partnering.

I found her slide on “Who Needs to be Involved” very perceptive. It consisted of 4 concentric ovals representing the various groups of partners who would have different levels of involvement in a partnership. For me, it was an excellent graphic to describe a special partnership called a coalition.

By its nature, coalitions are a coming together of some broad and diverse interests in a particular issue or initiative. Because of this, it is a little more challenging to organize and maintain this special form of partnership. I have been representing my organization on one such coalition and have often been puzzled by the difficulties of defining the roles and responsibilities of the diverse groups and individuals in the coalition.

Anne’s graphic of the 4 concentric ovals with the inner one being Core Partners and then progressively moving out with Specific Involvement, Resource Support and Peripheral is a very useful depiction of 4 levels of partners that might form a typical coalition. Depending on the nature and make-up of a particular coalition, the graphic could be amended with more or less concentric ovals and might even have different titles.

For me, it was instructive to view a coalition as a partnership of individuals and groups who have a varying interest, role and involvement in a particular issue, project or initiative. Given this organizational construct, it would be relatively easy to devise roles and responsibilities for the various interest groups in a coalition thereby allowing it to be an effective coalition with greater capacity to achieve its goals and objectives.

Thanks for conference. Thanks for the insight and learning. Thank you to the organizers and sponsors.

As the instructor of this program, I spend the majority of my working day in the classroom directly with students. My students are delightful and I greatly appreciate the opportunity to work face-to-face with them. However, as the sole literacy professional at my organization, I sometimes feel very isolated and disconnected with the literacy community at large.

This is where the Spotlight on Learning: Becoming Agents of Change conference shone for me! Not only did I get to meet other literacy professionals and learn about what was happening in the literacy world in other provinces, I got to meet other ABE instructors from within my own province. In fact, my roommate at the conference was an instructor with a program very similar to mine! We spent a large amount of our time at the conference discussing curriculum and classroom issues and ways to help our students achieve to the best of their abilities. This connection continues to be invaluable to me as we have begun to share resources and strategies between our programs via email. In this way, both of our programs have benefited from our attending this conference.

And I no longer feel so out of the loop!

Jessica Lee-Middleman
New Beginnings ABE

From this session I realized that we as an organization needed to do more to prepare our clients for entering the work force and to understand personal money management. The tools online and activities they discussed would be very benifical to our clients.

Since that session I have written two proposal to try and find funding to enhance our current programing with financial literacy training. I am hoping we will be successful in bringing this much needed training to our communities.

Thank you Ontario Literacy for providing this opportunity.