Daily Hours: 3
Total Hours: 103.5
This morning I joined Chris for the Neighborhood Resource Team meeting at Centro Hispano. There are around 8 or so NRTs for neighborhoods in Madison that are considered "at risk," bringing together various community stakeholders to discuss issues facing the areas. The Southside NRT meets every two months or so, and Chris represents the Library at the meetings. Michael goes to the NRT meetings for the Leopold Neighborhood, another area where our user-base lives. Apparently attendance was "light" at this meeting because of summer vacations, but there were representatives from Joining Forces for Families, Brier Patch (Youth Services of Southern Wisconsin), and the City (Housing, Economic Development, Community Development, the Clerk's Office). A police officer from the Southside Station and the director of Centro Hispano were also in attendance.
For me, the most interesting thing about the meeting was seeing how information was spread among the diverse stakeholders. Each representative gave a brief summary of upcoming events relating to their organization or put out feelers about future opportunities etc. It was great to see in-person networking in action; there sure was a lot of contact information being thrown around the room. For example, the police office wanted to let everyone know that they had started a new video briefing system and were inviting organizations to send representatives down to the station to record video messages about upcoming events and other concerns that would then be shown at the officer briefings. They have realized this is the best way to get the word out in the Force. One thing I really liked was the fact that many of the representatives described their current programs, letting everyone know that they should refer any individuals in the community they felt could benefit (i.e. youth leadership development at Centro Hispano, transitional housing for youth at Briar Patch, diversification of electoral poll workers [especially more Hmong speakers]). Chris highlighted our Eat, Play, Art place-making event happening in a few weeks.
At the end of the meeting there was some discussion about a lack of collaboration between organizations on the Southside, which really surprised me; As my journal entries have shown, I have been impressed with the collaboration I have seen so far this summer! I asked Chris about this later and she said she doesn't have that same attitude. Basically she said "It's all about showing up," which has definitely been her defining career motto as a librarian. She said she felt like there have been some issues in the community regarding past collaborations: some of the smaller organizations feel like the bigger organizations with "stronger leadership" like the Girls and Boys Club get all the press and credit for events. But that aside, after going to the meeting this morning, it is even more clear to me how libraries can play a pivotal role in the dissemination of information about community services, referring patrons to organizations that best meet their needs. But in order to do that effectively, librarians need to know what is going on the community and exactly what services are out there, and collaborations like the NRT meetings are a great way to stay informed. I'd be interested to know how involved librarians from other branches are within their own neighborhoods...
After the meeting I spent the rest of the morning catching up on business with the BadgerBOTS program, making the poster for the event and sending out contracts etc. And now I plan on spending some more time on my Spanish-services project this afternoon, which I really dug into yesterday (another blog post will follow detailing those "shifts").
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