Literacy leads to engagement

A few years ago we were involved in a national project where literacy practitioners were supported to look at an element of their work through a research lens. Storytellers’ Foundation was the community organization on a BC team that also included Leona Gadsby and Marina Niks. There were other teams from across Canada doing similar work. The national project was called, “Connecting the Dots”. We learned a lot. This research project gave us space away from the busyness of “doing” literacy to give attention to something that has always been of interest to us at Storytellers’. We were able to research about the interplay between literacy and social capital.

Often people think of literacy as a tool in developing our human capital. Human capital can be thought of in contrast to financial capital. Financial capital is the cash, stocks and bonds that reside in bank accounts. Human capital is the stocks of knowledge, skills and personal attributes, which reside within us. Human capital is embodied in our investment in education or job training. If you agree with this definition of human capital then it seems to make sense that literacy and human capital are intricately connected.

We live and work in the Upper Skeena region. All our communities are on the Gitxsan First Nation territories. Most of the people who access our community literacy and learning programs are members of the Gitxsan First Nation. The goal of our literacy and learning program is to support people to build the knowledge, skills and confidence to become engaged citizens. For us to achieve success we needed to know more about citizenship. For the Gitxsan First Nation a citizen must have strong social capital to be engaged. Social capital is embodied in our investment to have reciprocal relationships with our families and neighbours. It means, for us, that literacy plays a role in increasing a person’s capacity for unpaid work. It’s not always about getting a job. Social capital is also a contrast to financial capital. Social capital describes the structures and quality of social relationships between people. The Connecting the Dots project helped us to learn how our literacy work can contribute to building social capital. This led to us creating a social capital engagement rubric:

SOCIAL CAPITAL

GOODWILL - SENSE OF BELONGING - SOCIAL TRUST - INCLUSIVENESS - CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY - RECIPROCITY

Social capital is a way of looking at the trusting relationships we have in our personal lives and in our community life.

1	2	3	4	5	6
AVOIDANCE	AWARENESS	WAKE UP	ENGAGEMENT	ACCESS	ORGANIZER
“I’m disconnected”	“I see beyond myself”	“I influence”	“I effect change”	“I’m needed”	“I’m part of the glue”

This rubric helps us name and measure how and when we are building social capital and how, through this deepening of relationship with others, we are able to engage more in our community. We’ve learned that the more people engage the stronger their social capital and the more a person has social capital the greater their commitment to act for the wellbeing of our community. This means we immerse our literacy programming in community development work. Since we’ve done this we have witnessed people entering our programming seeing themselves as only a learner but soon we see them tapping in to their capacity as leaders and seeing themselves as agents in making change, not only in their own lives but in the lives of our community. This is having a powerful and political impact in our community.

For example, it is that time of year when we are starting our seeds indoors. We’re gearing up for another season of growing and eventually selling produce. One of our literacy programs is known as Youth Works. Youth Works is a social enterprise that sells sandwiches to the local gas bar and sells food at the local Farmers Market. Youth Works also takes young adults on to the territories to harvest wild foods, especially berries, that they turn in to delicious jams and jellies. The outcome of Youth Works is to nurture young people who have been pushed to the margins to become happy, engaged citizens who are in control of their lives and the life of their community.

As we support these young adults to progress on the Social Capital Engagement rubric, we encourage them to engage in real life community projects. This takes courage.

Courtney has courage. Courtney takes great pride in selling at the Farmers Market and helping to run our local chapter of the BC Farmers Market coupon program where anyone struggling economically can get coupons that replace cash to buy local food. Courtney and her Youth Works counterparts are building relationships while doing this. It means while they engage, they build social capital with their neighbours. Courtney and her counterparts are building a food community where famers, producers and, the original hunters and gatherers, are starting to work and live together. When we see Youth Works bringing more of their peers (mainly Gitxsan and Wet'suwet'en) to the market not only as consumers but also as sellers, we see a future. The learner has become a leader and is shaping the social, economic and political future of our community.

Youth like Courtney are blending the gathering from the territories with healthy backyard gardens and small-scale community gardens. And they are showing a pride. They are taking a lead role and they are finding a place for themselves inside their own territories. This is an exciting story at any Farmers Market.  When we think of our recent history in the Upper Skeena, this story becomes a story of how literacy can be political and mobilizing. The influences of colonialism, industrialization and corporatism has resulted in an even higher incidence of people not producing food locally in an area where malnourishment is common and where being able to feed ourselves was historically commonplace.  The legacy has left a difficult relationship between local “foodies” and First Nation people. Now that is changing because of people like Courtney. Our market is bringing together First Nation and non-first nation. It is bridging culture, socio-economic class and it is healing wounds. Our market demonstrates a local living economy where harvesting from the land can be unpaid work and it can allow youth like Courtney to engage in the cash economy. Courtenay’s story is a literacy story. It demonstrates that literacy is a key lever in building community capacity.  And it highlights that when the learner is supported to participate in community life, and increase social capital, they become agent. The quality of their relationships mobilizes them to continue to engage.