Several months ago, Supervisor Antonvich offered additional funding earmarked for girl empowerment programming at the library. My Children's Librarian approached me and wanted to know if we could develop a proposal. In general, I believe that if someone is offering funding we have a responsibility to our community to obtain it; so the Children's Librarian, the Teen Librarian and I sat down to throw around some ideas. The first idea was to be ambitious and offer an entire month of programming. The Children's Librarian was interested in financial workshops; the Teen Librarian was interested in public speaking and positive body images; and I was interested in an all day workshop which would include a panel discussion. In the end, they crafted a successful proposal to include everything with weekly programming throughout the month culminating the the workshop.
Several years ago I attended the Department of Public Works Women's Leadership Conference. It was a fantastic day that inspired me. The day was filled with hearing the stories of amazing women that broke barriers. They offered courage to take risks and hope for success in the long game. All during the conference, I strategized how this concept would look as a library program but I knew that it wouldn't be something that I could add to my plate as the lead. It took a couple of years but at last I had several other team members on board with the idea. The Teen Librarian took the lead on the entire project and did a phenomenal job of working out the details. She worked hard in finding people to fill the slate of programming for the month. All payments for performers needed to go through a procurement process, in one case she had to follow up and walk the public speaker through the process of obtaining a vendor ID. She also spent time reaching out to the community for donations of items that couldn't be funded through the grant--food and prizes. Her diligence, patience and perseverance was impressive. When it came to execution, she ensured that each of the programs throughout the month ran smoothly and utilized her teen volunteers effectively.
My responsibility was to moderate the panel discussion and to lend the Teen Librarian support in any way that she needed. Last Friday while we were working together, she expressed concern because there were not many sign ups for the event--in fact at that time there was only one. The fliers she had created were being taken but there hadn't been any real commitment for the event. In order to get girls to commit, I thought we needed to highlight the swag that had been donated as giveaways. I gathered the donated items, packaged them up and brought a table down to put in the lobby in order to create interest as well as facilitate a talking point. Almost immediately we had several sign ups. Over the next week we had more sign ups. This morning about half them attended the program.
The Teen Librarian had secured a small donation from Trader Joe's for some snacks, and from a pizza parlor for lunch time pizza. The Friends supplemented both donations with fruit, yoghurt, salad and a few other goodies.
The girls started the morning off with a fitness expert that got everyone engaged. He had a number of activities designed to engage them and focus them on how activity = confidence = success. In one activity he had each small group create their own dance steps using symbols with one person designated as the teacher, then the groups moved around the room trying out each groups dance. At the end, all of the girls were energized and they settled down with their first round of snacks for the panel discussion. We had 9 professional women speaking, a deputy from the LA County Sheriff's Department, an engineer at JPL, a local self-employed business woman, a project coordinator for the Red Cross, a martial arts professional, and several other impressive women all agreed to spend part of their Saturday at the library in hopes of inspiring the young women. They talked about themselves, challenges they faced in their careers, and offered advice and hope for the girls.
After the panel discussion we broke for lunch, many of the panelists joined us for lunch. I observed several of the them speaking with the girls, networking with each other and I overheard the Teen Librarian speaking with the martial art professional about a potential library program that would teach parents and kids about personal safety. While everyone was still enjoying lunch, a financial planner for Kaiser Permanente gave a brief presentation on personal finance. He was truly engaging. It isn't easy to make finance interesting but he did it--this guy is a valuable resource that we will want to tap again for future programming.
After lunch the local robotic club gave a presentation. The robotics coordinator had her kids break up with our attendees in small groups to talk up their club and give them all the opportunity to have a hands on experience with the robot. Next up one of our long time teen volunteers that I have worked with closely in the past gave a presentation on the importance of developing a healthy diet to support a healthy body able to engage in exercise and a healthy mind that remains agile by working on puzzles and logic games while limiting screen time. The presentation was the final product of her senior project. Her poise was amazing and clearly her audience was engaged as several girls raised their hands to add to her comments and questions-I was so proud of her.
The next segment was Dress for Success. The Teen Librarian obtained a blow up mannequin and brought in a variety of outfits to dress her up. Beforehand, she engaged the audience in an interactive PowerPoint of girls in different outfits. They discussed what occasion each outfit would be appropriate for. The girls then had the opportunity to dress the mannequin for different occasions. They had so much fun
with this section as they negotiated getting the mannequin dressed and accessorized for a wedding, a job interview, a day at the park, etc.
Finally it was time to wrap everything up and to present the giveaways. I led this final section. I told the girls that I hope they had a great time and enjoyed the day. I explained that some of them may not find anything immediately useful and that is OK. But maybe one day, they will be deciding which class to take and remember that some of the women suggested drama and speech classes and decide to enroll. They may have another moment when they remember something that they heard today and it will guide them in a future decision. I talked about taking risks, not having regrets and to owning up proudly to mistakes--through mistakes we grow. I have to admit that it was a fairly impassioned speech tying in the elements that we had heard all day with hope for the future. At the end, I presented each with a key and told each "Here is a key to remember that success is within you." And finally the prizes were handed out and the girls went home.
Overall it was a successful day. I loved seeing how an idea was executed and led by someone other than myself. I loved all the inspirational messages and seeing all the engagement throughout the day. I hope that this is a new tradition for the library.