This short history of the society is an outline only for the more distant past It gives more detail about more recent evenmts.

Origins

For many years now, Palmerston North volunteers have been delivering free literacy tuition to others in the community.

In the early years the programme was part of the Massey University Community Extension Course. In 1977, the AFLEC (Awapuni Family Life Education Council) requested that the Massey University Community Extension Course train literacy tutors to deliver programmes.

A new programme was born. Training was delivered free of charge in 2 regional centres; Pahiatua (including Dannevirke) and Palmerston North (including Marton and Feilding). At the completion of the training it was expected that each group establish an Adult Readers' Service. In July 1977 the first coordinator was appointed and a committee elected. At this time the scheme did not have a home, so the committee met in homes, parks, and other work places that would allow them use of their space. Advertising was begun; students started to arrive. Later that same year, the "Adult New Reader" section was established at the public library, with a dedicated librarian. Now known as "The Adult Learning Collection" it is still a vital part of the city library.

At a National Conference in 1982, the Adult Reading and Learning Assistance (ARLA) Federation came into being, with centres all over the country - of which this society is one.

Originally known as Palmerston North "Adult Reading & Learning Assistance Scheme", the current society was incorporated in July 1990. The organisation's brief was to provide learners with a range of literacy services free of charge; a philosophy that has not changed to this day. It was a founding member of the ARLA Federation. In 1988, this federation merged with another similarly motivated organisation to be known as "Literacy Aotearoa" - an organisation of which ALPN is still a member.

In 2002 we adopted our present name ('Adult Literacy Palmerston North'). This name change coincided with the opening of the new centre in the premises that we currently occupy. ALPN continues to deliver free tuition to members of the community. With the assistance of volunteers from all walks of life over many years, we look forward to continuing to play a vital role in the community.

Yesterday

Now we begin to look at more recent events over the last year or more, to give a background to what we are now trying to do.

The excitement of Adult Learners' Week at the beginning of September last year (see the separate notes on our displays!) is long over - with a (16-month) year planner in our office to remind us all that the first full week in September this year will come around all too soon - another Adult Learners' Week!

At the end of last September our chairman attended the International Adult Literacy conference held in Auckland at which it was possible to find out what is going on elsewhere in NZ, Australia and the rest of the world. Some of the ideas picked up align with our current long term thinking, others needed to be considered when we did a long-term planning review in November. Perhaps the major thought which came from the conference was that it is currently estimated that 40% of adults of European or Asian extraction are not considered sufficiently literate to survive on their own in New Zealand society; for Māori and Pacific Islanders this figure is, regrettably, far higher - around 70%!

During the last week in October the Chairman and Manager both attended the annual governance/management meeting organised by Literacy Aotearoa in Levin. We learnt about the need to build relationships with local iwi where we could support their own efforts in literacy education. We were also able to glean some idea of what other local member societies are doing and planning - as well as the need for long term planning to face the changed regulatory environment in which we will work in the future.

The Art Appreciation seminars held towards the end of last year were warmly appreciated by those attending. If there is sufficient demand then we will consider holding another series later in 2008.

The forward planning exercise undertaken in November 2007 tried to look forward as far as 2015 - when most of those now on the committee could well be elsewhere. Part of the exercise, however, was to identify the main current difficulties which would prevent our reaching the 'ideal society' in 2015. We easily managed to identify two -

• An urgent need for tutor training - and more tutors too.
• An urgent need to obtain a suite of modern computers to enable us to make use of modern educational software tools.

Our delayed Annual General Meeting (AGM) which took place on 27th March2008is reported in the notes of the meeting here. An abbreviated version of the Annual Report may also be read here.

As suggested above, we have big plans to introduce the use of specialised Adult Education software tools. The new work stations in our computer room have been built and about half of them have reasonably modern Windows-based computers. We will be retiring older machines as funds become available.

Our first tutor training course for over two years has finished (we hopenot to have to wait so long for the next course!). We welcome our new tutors and are pleased to have been able to help those who have been waiting so long. Once these tutors have completed the 'in-service' requirements of the NZQA level 5 teaching certificate we look forward to being able to celebrate with them.

If you have thoughts about helping your community by tutoring others who need you, then please contact us and arrange to come along for a chat about tutoring and the fun it can be! Have a look at the tutoring section of this site for more information.