• The field is anyone or everyone involved in providing an opportunity for people to learn or to gain confidence in their ability to learn.

• The literacy field should be accessible by all individuals who wish to develop or raise their skills to a certain competency level – such as those defined in IALS.

• The literacy field encompasses the entire community: family, unions, schools, colleges. Everyone from people living on the street to people working in high paying jobs needs access to literacy materials and help.

• The literacy field includes all the people involved in promoting and providing services that help improve literacy skills. This refers primarily to the instructors, tutors, administrators, and researchers/writers directly involved in this work. But it can also include the learners themselves and the workplace and community members who support and take part in various programs and initiatives.

• Literacy has a broad definition and a broad spectrum. It is community development – in the broadest sense of the word.

• The literacy field refers to all the people, in all the roles who support or research people in developing, using, or understanding literacy as individuals or members of a group.

• The Literacy Field is a broad spectrum of “activities and support” encompassing everyone from the highest levels of government policy makers to the front line volunteer who enjoys reading children’s’ stories at their local library, and every interested or affected person in between.

• One group defined “the field” of literacy into several smaller groups of “deliverers”, “consumers”, “community partners” and “government”:

Deliverers:

- family literacy
- community literacy
- college/school district ABE
- workplace literacy

Service Facilitators and Providers:

- coordinators
- managers
- administrators
- support staff

Consumers:

- people who attend learning programs and/or meet with tutors, coordinators, instructors, managers

Community Partners:

- social and health agencies and workplaces

Government:

- agencies
- services
- policy makers