How often do literacy workers feel that they and their endeavour are not valued, and then stretch to try to offer both the resources and the concrete message to students that the students and their efforts are valued? For women who have been devalued this may be the most crucial message to make learning possible.

Char Caver valued a training that confirmed her own belief in the importance of "acting outside the oppression" in order not to "repeat the oppression." Workers in several programs talked about how easily their own way of working with each other and with students could be part of the "whole structure of violence." Taking part in a project that offered a little extra space could allow literacy workers the opportunity to "ditch the craziness" for a little while and create some well-being for themselves and their students. The question for many who participated was, how to get that message heard more broadly in a climate that was, as several said, getting worse, not better.

Draw new lines between healing and learning

Project funding also created the time and space to explore building connections and collaborations with therapists and healers, and integrate the creative arts into learning opportunities. Instead of trying to draw a line to divide these areas of work, literacy workers had permission and support to explore drawing new lines to link work that is connected within each person, and imagine new programming and new collaborations. Literacy workers often spoke about the new insights these collaborations gave and about the freedom of knowing that they had support in the form of somebody to whom they could take the tensions and worries of their work. Programs explored coleading groups with a counsellor; having local counsellors offer training for themselves and their colleagues; meeting with counsellors in study circles to learn more about the intersections of their work; and meeting individually or in staff teams with counsellors who could help them think through problems.