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Daybreak club is first past the post

Daybreak First Past The Post
Shirley Pat Gale (right) of Williams Lake Daybreak Rotary Club with members of the Toosey band

Anyone who has ever met her will agree that Shirley-Pat Gale is a human dynamo. The driving force from the Williams Lake Daybreak Rotary Club is the hidden secret behind forming the partnership that resulted in the opening of the Toosey Library at Klesko (Riske Creek).

The combined library/gathering place at Klesko is historic as it becomes the first Rotary/First Nations partnership project to be completed and opened in British Columbia. Many more such partnerships are sure to follow.

As is frequently the case with Rotary anywhere in the world, it happens that there is more than one Rotary Club in town, and in this case its in the town of Williams Lake. Shirley-Pat with the Daybreak Club has a partnership with Klesko. The other club, the Williams Lake Rotary Club, is also involved in an aboriginal literacy project, but their affiliation is with the Stone band of the Chilcotin nation. That reserve is located much further west on the Chilcotin plateau.

Stay tuned for news about the Stone/Williams Lake partnership. Meantime, cheers to Shirley-Pat for being the driving force behind this great project, the first of many more in the province of British Columbia, creating what may become a blueprint for many other communities around the world to follow.

Top W2R volunteer off to university

Toosey 5Shirley-Pat Chamberlain from the Williams Lake Daybreak Rotary Club has been a top volunteer for Write to Read in the Cariboo region, assisting with the development of libraries in several First Nations communities. While it is bad news that W2R will be losing her services, the great news is that she has been accepted at prestigious Edinburgh University for a PHD in Interdisciplinary Studies. The interesting thing is that Shirley-Pat’s thesis will be focussed on the Write to Read Project and what effect it has made to communities, relationships with aboriginal peoples in British Columbia.

Many people have remarked that the Write to Read Project is a “blueprint” that can be copied in other Canadian provinces, and also in other aboriginal communities around the world. Literacy is always the first step towards self-determination. Here is hoping that Shirley-Pat’s thesis will go a long way towards creating a written version of that blueprint, to be copied everywhere!