Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Quality Storytents 2018: Multi-Neighbourhood Community Literacy

Our major 2018 Community Literacy Project consisted of eight event-based storytents (five urban and three suburban/rural) as well as free books for children and families.

We believe a storytent can enhance a community fair, a school festival, or an organization’s summer picnic, and also send a positive message about literacy.  Effective event tents can promote a reading culture.  They demonstrate that reading can happen anywhere.  They encourage children and families to keep books and reading in their quality pictures of a fun outing.  As well, they provide a way to promote or outreach additional services; or to gauge interest in new programming.

In 2018 we ran storytents at

  • Celebration Sunday, RiverCross Church (Saint John)
  • Brown’s Flat Days, River Road Hub (Brown's Flat)
  • Passport2Parks, Rockwood (Saint John)
  • Canada Day Celebrations, Brundage Point (Grand Bay - Westfield)
  • Passport2Parks, Chown Field (Saint John)
  • 50th Anniversary Celebration, South End Daycare (Saint John)
  • Crescent Valley Fun Days, Crescent Valley Community Tenet’s Association (Saint John)
  • Come Home Week, Tri-County Complex (Fredericton Junction)

We met 169 adults and 226 children over these eight events.  We were also able to distribute 80 packages of Books for Children and Families, a New Brunswick authored collection of 10 books for pre-school children and their families developed by the University of New Brunswick.

Major support for 2018 Quality Storytent Project came from the Province of New Brunswick, Department of Tourism, Heritage and Culture and the Province of New Brunswick, Department of Social Development.  Additional funding was provided through private donors.