On Tuesday, October 13, the inaugural Everyday Advocacy Challenge (EAC) called for a time of reflection with this Take Action Tuesday prompt:
Submit the Share Your Advocacy Story webform.
EAC cohort member Lise Tewes shares these reflections on our Week 7 challenge:
This week’s Everyday Advocacy Challenge turned the focus inward and became an examination of conscience, so to speak. But fortunately, the challenge required spending time looking for the examples of when I’ve been good, not when I’ve been bad! I learned these three things from our challenge this week:
It’s good to look back at what you’ve done right. Too often, in our hyper-critical society and workplaces, we are focused on the negative, on the things we didn’t do, or the things that didn’t work very well. The “woulda, coulda, shouldas.” Taking stock of the things that have gone well, that we did right, of the efforts that have been successful, is powerfully motivating!
When I started to think back in order to discover a successful advocacy effort that I could post on the webform, I discovered that there were actually quite a few examples of successful advocacy activities that I could choose among. Wow, that made me feel good! It energized me and made me realize that advocacy is not some weird, odd activity that I have to make a special effort to fit into my already over-extended schedule.
It’s basically what I do every day.
It’s the time I take singing the praises of my library, to everyone and anyone, and I do that at every storytime, outreach visit, and community meeting that I attend. Sometimes my “praise singing” is more vocal than others, more effective than others, or has a deeper impact in my community than others.
But all advocacy efforts, big and small, are important, and we need to pat ourselves on the back sometimes and take stock of how successful we are, at everything we are doing!
Advocacy = “Let me tell you what the Library can do for you.” As mentioned above, advocacy isn’t some weird activity that requires specialized training and time. It’s simply the efforts we make to ensure that the people in our community, state, and nation are aware of all the wonderful materials and services that libraries of all kinds can provide to improve and enrich the lives of everyone, which ensures that libraries have value in the community, state, and nation.
When the library is woven deeply into the fabric of the life of the community, then it becomes very easy to advocate at the level of lawmakers and budget-cutters, which is usually the level of politicians. And politicians seldom want to cut or eliminate services that are popular, i.e., deeply entrenched, in the community.
So start in the community, become an essential player in all the activities of your community, and you will have the community’s support and approval. And if the politicians even suggest that the library should be cut or downsized or, heaven forbid, eliminated, the roar of the community should silence those ridiculous politicians!
Success breeds success, so share your advocacy stories! Why do we have an Everyday Advocacy website and Share Your Advocacy Story webform?
Because we all need to pat ourselves on the back and congratulate ourselves for the great work we are doing (re-read the first point above).
Because we need to see that, in libraries of every kind and all around the country, we are all working hard at advocacy, at making our libraries valued by its users and acknowledged as such by decision-makers. In other words, we are all in this together, and there is always strength and encouragement in numbers!
Finally, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! The advocacy story that is posted by another library in a state far away might inspire me to do a similar activity in my own Library. And I might inspire someone far away to try an activity that I have done successfully.
But if we don’t have a forum for sharing those stories, I’ll never have a chance to find out about the great activity that Library Faraway did, and then I’ll miss the chance to improve my own community and library. I want to hear about other libraries and the great work they are doing. I want to be inspired and challenged and encouraged in my work, and a simple click on the Everyday Advocacy website might be all it takes sometimes to get my mojo moving!
Here’s hoping that we all spend some time patting ourselves on the back for what we’ve done right, and then sharing our stories with everyone in the library world.
Lisa Tewes is a supervisor and librarian at Kenton County (Ky.) Public Library. She’s a member of the inaugural Everyday Advocacy Challenge cohort, an 18-member volunteer group convening from September 1-October 20, 2015.