Look for us at Healthy Living Fairs. We’ll have as many of our resources to give away as we can carry.
Last week we left Yellowknife with 50 kilograms of luggage and returned from Délı̨ne with only 4.5 kilograms.
That’s because we gave away books and other literacy resources. We found out that Robert Munsch is particularly popular. We gave away homemade play dough and lots of copies of Recipes for Fun because the play dough recipe is in that booklet. People were interested in all our family literacy resources, the Healthy Aboriginal Network comic books, and our plain language writing booklets — everything we had with us. Our new NWT Literacy Council bags were popular and helpful for people to carry everything they collected from the various display tables.
The fairs are a chance for us to meet with people that we don’t usually connect with, people other than the adult and early childhood educators that we most often work with. We talked about the work of the NWT Literacy Council. We listened to what people said they were interested in. In Fort Providence, a number of people said their children were signed up for the Canada Learning Bond, surprising since the uptake for this program is less than 10% in the NWT.
We especially enjoyed the fairs that were attended by a cross section of the community, young and old, men and women. We met lots of people involved in wellness initiatives from across the north.
Thanks to the NWT Department of Health and Social Services for the chance to connect with so many great people. The department also provides food and entertainment at each fair.
We’re at the fair in Enterprise this week and travel to more communities in early 2017. Hope to see you there. We’ll have as many of our resources to give away as we can carry!
-- Katie Johnson
