Greetings, YALSA members!
All of us are advocates. When we are promoting books and resources to our teens, staff, and community, we are advocating. When we are supporting a cause or group by speaking and/or writing about it, or donating to it, we are advocating. When we are urging, championing, advancing, and pleading for our teens, communities, library, programs, services, and funding, we are advocating.. Advocacy utilizes many ways, styles, forms, and people. Now, more than ever, we need to increase our advocacy, and at the same time, be more diligent and strategic in our advocacy efforts.
We need you! We need writers, talkers, listeners, researchers, doers, planners, organizers, analyzers and critics, Whatever your strength and skillset, we need you! Individually we need your skills, knowledge, and resources, collectively we need many of you to serve on a task force to learn more about the advocacy needs of library staff and teens in preparation of accessible and relevant YALSA resources.
For more information about the task force, click here: YALSA Advocacy Resources: Community Listening Task Force
Volunteers will be working on a timeline. The timeline is listed below:
- Taskforce is formed and work begins: September 1, 2020
- Taskforce reports results to YALSA board March 15, 2021
- YALSA Board Advocacy strategic committee develops next steps for implementation April 15, 2021
If you have additional questions, please contact: YALSA President, Amanda Barnhart at AmandaBarnhart@kclibrary.org.
If you are interested in serving on this task force, please contact Letitia Smith at lsmith@ala.org by Friday, August 21.
Thank you for volunteering and your service to YALSA!
Sincerely,
Your YALSA Board
