Well, am continuing with the Buy One –  Donate One project – now have 2,927 requests for the free distribution and I expect that to climb once word of the program spreads.

My research has provided different numbers but it looks like there are somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 children living in poverty in British Columbia. That is a shocking number.

I knew we had a growing disparity between the haves and have nots in Canada but these numbers leave me dumbfounded. Unfortunately the situation appears to be worsening, not improving. Here are some frightening statistics from the Canadian Literacy and Learning Network:

LITERACY STATISTICS

In Canada…

42% of Canadian adults between the ages of 16 and 65 have low literacy skills.

55% of working age adults in Canada are estimated to have less than adequate health literacy skills. Shockingly, 88% of adults over the age of 65 appear to be in this situation

Impoverished adults often do not have the literacy skills required to get into job training programs. They may need literacy skills upgrading before they can succeed in training programs but only about 5 – 10% of eligible adults enroll in programs

Less than 20% of people with the lowest literacy skills are employed

A 1% increase in the literacy rate would generate $18 billion in economic growth every year

Investment in literacy programming has a 241% return on investment

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Sounds like a good investment to me.