Crafting for a Cause (ILA 2022 Session)

I am so grateful for the opportunity to participate in the Crafting for a Cause: Leveraging Community Partnerships to Provide Meaningful Service Experiences for Tweens and Teens Panel at the Illinois Library Association annual conference this fall.

This topic is definitely close to my heart. For several years, my former colleague, Dannie, and I hosted library programs together for our library’s social activism/community service program called Junior Justice League.

I had the opportunity to learn from them how to engage young people in determining the ways they want to improve their community - and then create activities to match their passions. From creating dog toys, upycling all the things, hosting book drives, Get out the Vote campaigns, activities related to animals and the planet, and more, we worked with young people and centered their concerns and voices. I was so happy to be able to work with Dannie again on this panel to revisit these good memories - and make some new ones.

It was wonderful to connect with library folks I had never met and all work together virtually on this original panel that focused on the very practical aspects of doing this work. Everyone was so kind and thoughtful - and I learned so much from their experiences. Their care and support for young people came across in everything they made with them. Our panelists included me, Dannie Moore, Amanda Klenk, Beth McCloskey, with additional contributions from Kerry Bailey and Alyssa Johnson. Kristi Miller expertly and seamlessly moderated our panel. As Kristi encouraged during our panel, we all have awesome things we do to share and highly encouraged attendees to submit panels for conferences as speakers.

Here’s the official description of our panel, which was Presented by the Youth Services Forum.

“Do you have middle and high school volunteers that need service hours? Do you want unique and fun activities that your tweens and teens will enjoy participating in while also giving back to the community? Now is the perfect time to renew or create new partnerships with area non-profit organizations and help students feel a connection to the community. A panel of youth and teen librarians from public libraries around Illinois will share service project ideas that have been successful at their libraries. You will be provided with a list of suggested organizations to partner with and supplies needed for all of the projects. All the sample programs can be scaled and adapted to fit different libraries, communities, and program formats, so attendees can take away practical ideas that are easy to implement.”

Click on the image above to access our slides.

You can also access our resources, supplies, and inspiration HERE. We wanted to make this panel super practical and help people return to their libraries with lots of ideas for community partners and activities. I think it was also important to show how it takes time to build community, especially during an ongoing global pandemic, and creating programs to reach our young people is a craft in of itself. If we reach even one young person, we have made a difference. And service projects absolutely include experiences that support our own mental health.

One of my favorite parts of this panel was Q&A at the end where folks shared projects they’ve done in their libraries. One of the success stories was a haunted house in the library that was entirely done by teen volunteers and I want to do this in the future so much!

This panel also sparked some exciting energy for bringing service projects to my new library, so I’m excited to work on these projects with my awesome colleagues for our winter program cycle. Hopefully, we can all dream big together to make a difference in our communities.

Please do share if you end up using any of these ideas or if you have projects you’ve done. And feel free to reach out if you want any program plans, resources, or have questions. I love that we’re all here in this work together!