Powell River has a new literacy outreach coordinator.
Ilona Beiks has been hired to fill the Powell River Literacy Council position which has been vacant since last spring. The position is supported by Powell River Employment Program Society.
Beiks spent her first weeks on the job in “an archaelogical-type of exploration, digging up past records and reports and meeting with the community,” she said. “I am just collecting and listening, getting a feel for the community and its diverse needs.”
Beiks works in both Vancouver and Powell River. “I have one foot here and one there,” she said. “It’s part-time here and part-time there.”
Beiks discovered her future job while thumbing through the pages of the Peak. She had come up to Powell River with a friend who was moving here.
Looking at the advertisement for the literacy outreach coordinator, she thought she would be well-suited for the job with her diverse background in education, literacy and communications, both government and corporate.
She has a degree in education from the University of BC and for the past 10 years she has been the education coordinator at Vancouver International Writers’ Festival.
“I coordinate all the school programs from students in kindergarten to grade 12,” she said. She also does outreach work with the festival, bringing programs out to BC communities for people who might not be able to access it otherwise. She has also spent a number of years in government and corporate communications, as well as creating her own strategic communications firm.
She wrote a CBC radio documentary on her experience living in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery for six months.
She has worked with the Inland Refugee Society in Vancouver and helped to overhaul the organization’s ESL curriculum for Canadian newcomers.
“It all comes together,” she said.
Growing up in a home where her parents spoke Latvian, she learned at an early age what it meant to be literate. She was born in Vancouver but did not speak English until elementary school.
“It’s not about sitting down at night in front of a fire to read War and Peace, it’s how do you communicate in this world?” she said.
Literacy is not something narrowly defined by being able to speak or read the language of a certain place, but being educated enough to be able to operate there, she explained.
“Through literacy, every single person can realize their potential,” she said. “Your destiny shouldn’t be limited because you can’t figure out how to find a doctor or make healthy food choices.”
Beiks said she is developing a plan for literacy outreach that brings together all the various organizations in town who are interested in promoting literacy and builds on her predecessors’ work.
“My goal is to build an action plan with four or five key things and set up some measurements and get them done,” she said.
