Our team is excited to kick off one of our busiest weeks of the year: NWT Literacy Week! This year the theme is Connecting Generations. We are highlighting how literacy and communication can connect people of different ages, and how knowledge is shared from one generation to another. Just as we believe that parents and families are children’s first teachers, we also believe that children and young people can teach their elders. We hope you take time this week to learn, and share your learning with people of other generations.
Check out our social media for a schedule of events throughout the NWT, including online and virtual events. Some highlights include a multi-generational movement class that will be streamed on Facebook, a seniors technology assistance drop-in with youth volunteers in Yellowknife, and a S’mores & Stories event at ɂehtseo Ayha School in Délįne.
During Literacy Week, in keeping with the theme of Connection, we are excited to be launching our new logo and branding. As our organization has grown and changed over the last 35 years, we wanted a brand that encompasses the variety of our work, the interconnectedness of learning, and the ways that NWT residents work together to support literacy development.
The base of our new logo can be seen as an open book, laptop or structural support. As an open book it ties to each of our previous logos, and as a laptop it conveys some of the ways that literacy has changed. We want our programs to provide a structure for literacy and skill development and be a starting point for growth.
The coloured blocks inside the book represent strips of birch bark or rings of a tree. These are layers of learning building upon and supporting each other, just as we support each other when we share our skills and learn together.
The colours were chosen to reflect the brilliant colours seen on the land, in the water and in the skies of the NWT. The five colours each represent one of our core program areas:
- Adult Literacy
- Family Literacy
- Youth Literacy
- Indigenous Languages Promotion
- English Language Literacy for Newcomers
We look forward to sharing our new promotional materials during NWT Literacy Week, and our new branding throughout our 35th year!
- Katie Johnson, Program Director
