2017 Tasmanian Australian of the Year, Rosalie Martin and Island magazine celebrate …
Kate Harrison, Island Operations / Marketing Manager
… two years of partnership bringing together literacy and literature …
Rosalie Martin, speech pathologist and literacy advocate, and Island magazine, one of Australia’s leading literature journals are celebrating their two-year partnership by bringing out a special – and free – collection of seven essays, written by individuals who have successfully come through an adult literacy program implemented or championed by Martin’s charity organisation, Chatter Matters Tasmania.
The founding speech pathologist of Chatter Matters Tasmania – a charity building awareness and skill in human communication – Rosalie Martin has been honoured by being named the 2017 Tasmanian Australian of the Year, and is now a National Finalist for the title of 2017 Australian of the Year (to be announced tonight – 25 January 2017).
Helping adults crack the code of reading, Rosalie has developed a unique approach to literacy. For three years, she has visited Tasmania’s Risdon Prison as a volunteer to deliver ‘Just Sentences’, a pilot project that is achieving astounding results. With specialist knowledge in the acquisition of language, and in the processing and production of speech sounds, Rosalie is able to uncover hidden literacy problems and tackle them head on. It is a program she has extended beyond prison to a wider community of learners.
As a result, many of the people in her program have learned to read and write in a matter of months, and Rosalie is showing how many lives can be transformed.
In 2015, Rosalie Martin partnered with Island magazine, to provide a space where the newly literate could speak, in their own words, to the broader community who so often take their own literacy for granted. This ongoing partnership was founded on the understanding that literacy and literature are both essential for the activation of citizenship in a democracy.
As Martin says in her introduction to this collection of essays: ‘Across the series of seven Chatter Matters essays published in Island, the hoped-for outcomes for learners and readers have emerged. And now I find further benefit. I have been asking the new learners I work with to read the Island essays to me, or I read them aloud to them. I sit across the table from men and women, the authenticating feel and fragrance of the fine literary magazine between us, and see eyes well and throats choke as they read or listen. For in honest language, their own hidden pain is gently spoken. And the same soft syllables carry inspiration for who they are and what can be.’
Chatter Matters and Island magazine now invite you to share in this inspiring partnership by downloading the collection of essays …
For more information:
Rosalie Martin, Chatter Matters
0418 390 449
r.martin@spt.com.au
Twitter: @chattertas / Facebook: @chattermatterstasmania
Our mailing address is:
Island
PO Box 4703
Bathurst Street PO
Hobart, TAS 7000