Everyday Advocacy Challenge: Week 1 Reflections

The inaugural Everyday Advocacy Challenge (EAC) kicked off on Tuesday, September 1, with this Take Action Tuesday prompt:

Spend 15 minutes talking with your supervisor about your advocacy role within your library or organization.

Never ones to shy away from a tall order, we asked our intrepid cohort members to summarize their Week 1 experiences in six words or less. Here’s what a few of our 18 volunteers had to say:

• “Comfort zone has been taken down.”
• “Affirming yet eye-opening.”
• “Confirmed what I knew, added detail.”
• “A step in the right direction.”
• “Good to compare our perspectives.”
• “Supportive; free lunch!”
• “Conversation that had us both thinking.”
• “Thinking outside the box.”

For Kendra Jones, the EAC Week 1 challenge was “thought-organizing” since her supervisor was on vacation.

For JoAnna Schofield, the Week 1 challenge left her with “expectations met based on manager philosophy.”

Read on for more of Kendra’s reflections on preparing to talk with her manager about her Everyday Advocacy role as well as JoAnna’s vision for where her conversation can lead!

Kendra writes:

This week’s challenge happened to land at the same time my supervisor was on vacation. Since I was unable to speak with her, I decided to write some notes to help guide a future discussion.

When I sat down to write notes, I started to reflect on our past conversations when I was advocating for a policy, procedure, for our patrons, for myself, or for a co-worker. Coming away from these reflections, I was able to identify some issues we had discussed in the past but that were still unresolved or needed to be addressed more fully.

A big part of why so many of these issues have fallen to the wayside is likely due to my role as advocate not only being undefined but unsupported. I am fairly new to this position, but the politics are the same as in previous positions. My goal has always been, and remains, to gain the support and trust of my supervisors so that I can be the best advocate I can be. It has become clear that in order to make this happen, my supervisor and I need to be on the same page in terms of advocacy (we mostly are), and we have to work together to advocate for change.

After all this soul searching, my notes ended up being two sentences: “I need to advocate. How can we work together to make this happen?”

My hope is this will open an open and frank conversation and we will come up with a great plan moving forward.  

JoAnna writes:

Advocating within an organization, especially one in which you are employed, is often not an easy task. How far is too far? What is the nature of the environment, and where do I as the individual fit in?

This weeks’ Everyday Advocacy Challenge stretched my ethical and philosophical thinking skills (that I haven’t used as much as I did in library school) and encouraged me to find direct ways to connect with my supervisor on the the topic of advocacy.

Like many other places around the country, there is a more recent push in Akron, Ohio, to directly involve library professionals in community engagement. Rather than “sitting behind the table” at booth-sits or story times, librarians are looking for ways to build deeper and more meaningful relationships “at the decision-making table.” We are finding new ways to offer our expertise and resources to our community in order to showcase our immense value.

In some ways, community engagement can be seen as a flip of advocacy (especially for the purposes of this week’s challenge). Community engagement focuses on showcasing our value to community partners outside our organization while advocacy within our organization focuses on discovering the needs of our community and using this knowledge to inform internal policy and procedures. This information allows administration and professionals at all levels to best budget our limited resources (both time and fiscal) and steer our organization in a public-driven, literacy-focused way.

An actionable example of this type of advocacy in Akron has been our after-school snacks program. Research supports that hungry children do not perform as well in school because their basic needs are not being met. In Summit County alone, one in four children face hunger. The library offers a safe environment that (1) is filled with informational and recreational materials and (2) can also offer after-school snacks to Akron’s children through a partnership with the local food bank. Without the support of front-line librarians and administration, this partnership would not have been successful.

Kendra Jones and JoAnna Schofield are both librarians, working at the Tacoma (Wash.) Public Library and the Akron-Summit County (Ohio) Public Library, respectively. Kendra and JoAnna are members of the inaugural Everyday Advocacy Challenge cohort, an 18-member volunteer group convening from September 1-October 20, 2015.