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HomeNewsHay River NewsYour vote needed to help the NWT get a literacy 'Bison Bus'

Your vote needed to help the NWT get a literacy ‘Bison Bus’

A plan to transform an NWT school bus into a mobile literacy centre needs your vote.

The NWT Literacy Council believes buying and refitting a bus will allow its programs to have a much greater impact in the territory’s smaller communities.

“Our ‘Bison Bus’ would be a mobile family centre. The idea is we’ll have a small school bus and we’ll refit the inside to put some books and literacy games and activities in it, plus we’ll paint the outside so it looks like a bison,” explained Amanda Grobbecker, the council’s youth services coordinator.

“The idea is we’ll take it on the road to different communities to promote family literacy, games and activities. So we’d play with the kids, the caregivers and their parents, give them ideas to take home, and run part of our training program from the bus.”

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However, acquiring and transforming the bus will take money. That’s why the NWT Literacy Council has entered the Aviva Community Fund’s online contest, with up to $100,000 available in their category.

Vote online: Visit the Aviva Community Fund website, vote for the Bison Bus

The first round of the contest sees projects competing for online votes in order to be forwarded to a second phase in front of judges.

With that in mind, the NWT Literacy Council is urging people to visit the Aviva Community Fund website and vote for the Bison Bus.

“We need people to vote,” Grobbecker told Moose FM. “Only the top number of ideas in a category go to the judges. We need people to vote for us so we can go to the judges and hopefully receive the money for this to become a reality.

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“If you do receive the money, you have to implement things by December 2016. We’ll have about a year to get it going.

“We’ve wanted to have a mobile family centre for a while, that could take our programs and activities out to the communities. It makes things easier for everyone if we’re able to go directly to them.”

Once you register on the Aviva Community Fund website, you can vote every day until October 23.

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