TOONIES FOR TUTORING

Did you know that 1 in 5 Greater Victoria adults need better literacy skills to fully participate in society? And many children need better literacy skills to keep up in school.

Support a learner through the power of literacy.

Your club can help change that. All it takes for your club to change a learner’s life is for every member to donate a Toonie at every meeting!

These are the kinds of people that we help gain literacy skills. These profiles are fictitious but represent typical learner profiles.

John grew up in the interior of BC and left school at 14 because he needed to work on the family farm and found school challenging. Eventually the farm was sold, and he moved to Victoria where he has had intermittent labouring jobs. He is finding that harder because instructions are often in writing, and he is expected to apply for jobs online. John is 45 with a family. He feels that better literacy skills will let him take a course in building maintenance and find a permanent job maintaining an apartment building.

Emma is finding Grade 4 difficult and comes up with lots of excuses to miss school. Her parents are sure this is because she is behind in reading and mathematics so school seems to move very fast for Emma and she needs much longer to finish any tasks and is often confused . Her parents are concerned about the introduction of more content in Grade 5, when Emma has not yet mastered the basics. Emma responds very well to one on one interaction with a patient and encouraging instructor.

Kasper arrived from Poland two years ago with a degree in marketing. He is fully literate in Polish but struggles with fluency in spoken English. He has been working steadily, but wants to polish his conversational English to do better in interviews, and get back into his chosen profession.

Sandra is a few years away from retirement from a service job and is now a grandmother of three who live in Ontario. She has not had to use a computer at work, and has not been very interested. Feeling left behind, she just bought a laptop but does not know where to start with learning how to use it for getting information online, making online purchases, sending emails and, of course, Zooming with her grandchildren. Support a child or adult to acquire the literacy skills to succeed in life.

Step 1: If your book club does not have a name, come up with one.

Step 2: Each member donates a Toonie at every book club meeting.

Step 3: To reduce administrative costs, we suggest the following

Donation by cheque:

The book club selects one person to collect the donations and send the total funds raised to VLC either monthly, quarterly or annually. The donation can be sent to Victoria Literacy Connection, 602-620 View Street, Victoria, V8W 1J6, with the donor book club name in the memo line. A tax receipt will be promptly provided in the name of the donation collector.

Donation by credit card:

Find the “Toonies for Tutoring” button under “Donate to:”

Donation by individual book club member:

Click $24.00, equivalent to $2.00/month for one year
Click “other” to donate another sum
You are free to make a one-time donation or monthly donations.
Provide your book club name under “Dedication”
If you would like to cover the transaction fee, then click on the box below.
Then click “next”, where you will proceed to provide your credit card details in a secure manner. Once the process is completed, you will be sent a charitable tax receipt by email directly.

Donation by book club:

The designated person will donate on behalf of the book club members.
Choose “other” and indicate the total amount.
You are free to make a one-time donation or monthly donations.
Provide your book club name under “Dedication”
If you would like to cover the transaction fee, then click on the box below.
Then click “next”, where you will proceed to provide your credit card details in a secure manner. Once the process is completed, you, the credit card holder, will be sent a charitable tax receipt by email directly.

The program was the brainchild of a local book club member who thought that helping others to gain literacy skills was a natural fit for book clubs. Toonies for Tutoring was developed to provide an easy way for book club members to pool small ongoing donations to support Victoria Literacy Connection programs.

Your book club’s donation to Toonies for Tutoring will support VLC’s free literacy programs.
VLC provides free tutoring for children, youth and adults with a range of literacy needs in a variety of settings.
VLC operates entirely on the generosity of local donors and grants. Initiatives, like the annual Times Colonist Book Drive, help to support our programs.
Tutoring is delivered by volunteers. At any given time, we can have over 100 tutors involved with over 200 learners. Programs are managed by a small but mighty team of part-time staff who train, coordinate and support volunteers and learners.