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When I worked as the Bilingual Children's Associate at the Martin Regional Library, my supervisor Marie Welden and I often discussed ways we could support Spanish-speaking families in the East Tulsa community through library programming. We had Spanish-speaking families interested in our Parent/Child Workshop, but Marie noticed that when they attended these workshops, there were language and cultural gaps that we could not bridge alone. We needed community partners. For over a year before I joined her department, she had been on the lookout for a local organization culturally equipped to help Spanish-speaking families.
Eventually, Marie learned about the Power of Families Project (PFP), part of the Community Service Council in Tulsa. This group was in the midst of a grant-funded project to support Spanish-speaking families in Tulsa using the promotora (health promoter) model. Led at the time by Christina Starzl Mendoza (now Da Silva), her team of promotoras (Maria Elena, Magaly, Blanca, and Maricruz) connected with Spanish-speaking families in the Tulsa community and provided them with in-home support, including developmental screenings and connections to community organizations. Their work was a perfect fit for partnership in conjunction with the principles of Family Place Libraries and the Parent/Child Workshops. Marie took the organizational lead in this partnership with the PFP to have two Parent/Child Workshops for Spanish-speaking families in 2016. I worked together with Marie and fellow Martin Children's colleague Irina Gruver on these workshops. I led the workshop sessions because I speak Spanish. The promotoras recruited families for these workshops, bridging the cultural gap for families who may not have been aware of or comfortable with using library services. These Spanish-speaking families trusted the promotoras and were willing to try something new because of that trust. We were able to help more than 20 families through these programs: they were able to get connected with community professionals, make new friends, and learn more about library services. While we only partnered with the PFP for two Parent/Child Workshops, the relationships we developed in 2016 remain to this day. PFP uses the Martin Regional Library for many of their own community events, which is an opportunity that this partnership introduced to them. Marie Welden has since become the branch manager at the Broken Arrow Library. Christina Da Silva has moved on to work for the City Of Tulsa, now as the Tulsa mayor's Deputy Chief of Staff. Maria Elena Kuykendall now runs the PFP with the other promotoras; they recently collaborated in research with OU-Tulsa's Dr. Alicia Salvatore about stress and Spanish-speaking working mothers in Tulsa, which I learned about through a recent OU-Tulsa Lunch and Learn. Now that I am the Youth Librarian at the Herman and Kate Kaiser Library, I'm thankful I can stay connected with their work in the Tulsa community. Other Highlights from this Partnership
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