GEM ROWE

Board Mem­ber, Sec­re­tary

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"It was time for me to at­tempt to do some­thing mean­ing­ful... Al­ta has pro­vid­ed me the op­por­tu­ni­ty to make a pos­i­tive change"

One day, my home be­came an emp­ty nest and I felt that it was time for me to at­tempt to do some­thing mean­ing­ful. But what?

I have to thank Cyn­thia El­lis for plant­i­ng the Al­ta seed in my mind. She spoke in glow­ing terms about Paula Lu­cie-Smith and her team at the Adult Lit­er­a­cy Tu­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (Al­ta) and what a great job they were do­ing in en­abling adults to read and write. I de­cid­ed that this was some­thing I could do.

Mean­while, I had seen the Al­ta ad in the news­pa­pers and I made up my mind that this was where I would vol­un­teer my time. I con­tact­ed the of­fice and was called in for an in­ter­view. I was ac­cept­ed in­to the pro­gramme to be trained as a tu­tor and I have been do­ing that since 2004.

Vol­un­teer work is serv­ing oth­ers for free; be­ing an Al­ta tu­tor doesn't feel like work to me. In fact, I view it as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make a change in the life of an adult in a way that some­times I do not ful­ly com­pre­hend, in­clud­ing changes in my own life! Work­ing with the Al­ta stu­dents has turned out to be a most re­ward­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

To wit­ness first­hand the sur­prise first and then the joy of the stu­dent when he gets what we are try­ing to teach him is very spe­cial. Our stu­dents ap­pre­ci­ate our time and ef­fort and this in­spires and mo­ti­vates me to go to class each week.

Class­es are held in a non-threat­en­ing en­vi­ron­ment where stu­dents do not feel that some­one is hold­ing a "big stick" over them to get it right all the time. It may take some stu­dents longer than oth­ers to read flu­ent­ly.

How­ev­er, they know there is a place for them at Al­ta, un­til they ac­quire the lit­er­a­cy skills to earn ac­cep­tance in a so­ci­ety that can be very un­car­ing to those who are chal­lenged by words.

Al­ta has pro­vid­ed me the op­por­tu­ni­ty to make a pos­i­tive change in the life of an adult who oth­er­wise would be de­nied the ad­van­tages of the writ­ten word that so many of us take for grant­ed.

If you have the time, why not con­sid­er join­ing this re­mark­able NGO?