As the locally piloted concept takes off in other West Kootenay towns, Nelson’s community literacy drop in centre is settling into its new home and planning an expansion of services.
Formerly housed in the Nelson Public Library, the Learning Place moved to the basement of City Hall earlier this month.
“With the expansion of the library they just really needed all the square footage for their basic services,” explains Nelson’s literacy outreach coordinator Joan Exley.
“The pilot worked great, everyone was super happy, but it’s such a well-utilized library that they just didn’t have the space to give up.”
Though it’s overseen by the Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy, the Learning Place is home to programs from several organizations, including the Kootenay Career Development Society and the library.
The space hosts ESL classes and conversation clubs, provides space for an adult tutoring program and has played host to Scrabble tournaments, youth events and family reading programs.
“The vision is very much about a shared space... it’s a community space,” says Exley.
Getting the Learning Place into its new home was also a community effort. The space was furnished with donations from the library and the City of Nelson, and was donated to the Alliance rent free by the provincial government at the urging of local officials.
“The space is leased by the province and they just weren’t using the space,” Exley explains. “It was really through [mayor] John Dooley, who worked his channels and said this would be a great use of this space in our community.”
Exley says the new space has a few advantages — including privacy for its adult users who come for one-on-one tutoring sessions.
Now that they’re set up in the new space, Learning Place partners are looking at adding a few new programs, which could include drop-in times for adults looking for computer skills help and summer reading camps.
The current Learning Place schedule is available online at cbal.org and can be picked up at its City Hall location.
l Balfour, Trail, Castlegar and Grand Forks are also setting up community literacy spaces based on the Nelson model, though they’ll be part-time rather than permanent, with weekly programming.