BEBS Podcast #1: The Why of Equity-Based Summer Services

5:54PM Dec 4, 2023

Speakers:

Linda

LaKesha (she/her)

Keywords:

library

summer

community

support

systems

dismantle

services

equity

talk

lakeisha

podcast

collude

society

youth

work

thinking

linda

oppression

important

conversations

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the building equity based summers Podcast. I'm Linda Braun and I am a library community education in formal education consultant who works on supporting communities and particularly out of school time organizations to build and design and evaluate services that are equitable in their communities with youth and families. And I'm here with one of my favorite people in the world. Lakeisha Kimbrough Lakeisha tell us about you. I thank

you, Linda. Hello, everyone. My name is Lakeisha, Kimbrough and I do a number of things. Amongst those things, is facilitating coaching and consulting that has a healing centered lens. So healing centered equity work, healing centered work that leads us towards liberation, and supporting programming supporting organizations supporting individuals supporting communities, and what that might mean. What can that look like? How can we get there, and really understanding the importance and the value of that healing component, as we're working on more equitable systems, systems that support equity that lead us towards a liberated society for all of us.

So in this podcast, this is gonna be a monthly podcast, and this is our inaugural podcast. So welcome. Very excited about that. We're going to be talking about topics that are central to libraries and communities, working towards building equitable summer services. This is an outgrowth of a project that was started in the California, the California State Library and the California Library Association building equity based summers. And we focused on summers because most libraries around the United States and maybe in other countries as well have very intense intensive summer programming for their community summer services for their communities. And we wanted to work with libraries to think about how equity can be built into those summer services. So we've been doing this since 2020. And we're in our fourth year, and in 2023, the project was awarded funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. And we've been able to expand the work and the expansion allows for this podcast. And the expansion allows us to work with states around the country. And so at the moment, we have 11 states that we're working with, to build out the summer services that are equitable for youth, families and communities. And this is our first podcast, which we said, and we're going to talk in this podcast about the why of equity based on our services, why equity, why equity based summer services and maybe some of the foundational elements. And one of the things that we want to make sure to mention is that these podcasts actually grew out of they're part of our Institute of Museum and Library Services funding. They also grew out of location I having these conversations, sort of on a regular basis, I am so grateful to have someone to have these conversations with where we just like talk unscripted, just like somebody would say something and then we'd be off. And we thought, This is really fun. It's also interesting, and it can help people to learn to think to have conversations with each other. And one of the things that I've learned a lot about in our conversations. Lakeisha is how to have equity conversations, right? Just what to be what what kinds of things we want to talk about how to talk about really difficult sensitive topics with someone else. So I hope some of that comes through in this as well sort of be gritty and formal in these podcasts. And we'll see where the conversations go. So I hope you enjoy going along with us on this ride. And I'm going to start by asking you a question Lakeisha and the question is, why why do we think equity in summer library services is something we should be paying attention to?

Yeah, that's a really good question. And I think that question, you know, is probably at the core in the center of, of not just library services right, but why equity in general Um, and we know that we live in a space where we're humans, and we've made constructs and those constructs have caused us to other one another. And those those constructs, such as racialized identity, such as gender identity, socio economic status, right, there's so many ways that we have created things to other which has caused us to be at odds with one another for millennia. And it's created systems that are very inequitable systems that have been designed to support the quote unquote, normal, the quote unquote, right. Group to be in, right. And so because that has happened, we've lived within an equitable systems, we've all grown up in an inequitable society. And that means that we've not been able to truly reach our full potential as individuals, or as a society. And libraries are no exclusion, no exclusion to that every single system, every single institution has been impacted by systems of oppression. And how do we begin to explore how the system that I work in the institution in which I work in how has that helped to further the systems? Where has where have libraries been in a place of colluding? Even if that's not what we want it to happen? Because systems of oppression are tricky and sneaky, they get us to collude. The way they're designed the history of libraries, right? Like where were libraries in different cities were the better libraries in areas that had higher economic residents that had predominantly white residents. When were married women allowed to have their own library card. What were you the person

who said it was not until the 70s? In Seattleites? Yeah, that was not. Right.

Just like, just wow. Right. And so yeah, I think we, I think the other thing is, we get really stuck on the racialized component. And that's important, because it does touch on an impact every other system, especially when we're thinking about intersectionality of things. So the why is, we want to be able to heal the harms that have been done. And I know we, we sometimes like to say, Oh, the library is a neutral space, there's no such thing as neutrality. In the way systems of oppression work. There's no such thing. Everything has been designed to kind of help support the furtherance of, or the the shifting away from, right. And so equity and summer services for libraries is a few things. It's really naming and addressing. Wow, just historically, how have libraries been part of, of the othering process? And how do we begin to heal that? How do we begin to create spaces that are truly spaces of belonging for all members of our communities of our society? And in order to do that, we really have to ask ourselves, How do I get comfortable with being uncomfortable learning the history and thinking about how our policies and procedures in our library continuing to support these things? How does my summer programming at my library, how might that actually be non inclusive of members of our community? How might that programming not support community but support law libraries, uphold, you know, the work of libraries but not uphold members of the community. And holding that no community is a monolith. And that when we say, the community of a particular area, we know that community has many sub communities. And so I think the why is there's a lot of repair. And if we want to truly move into a space where society is for all of us, all of our systems, all of our institutions, all of the work we do within our organizations, our businesses, our institutions, we must begin to examine, how is the work that I'm doing in this space, creating, and will ultimately ripple out into a truly just society?

Yeah, that's great. You I was taking a couple of notes, which I don't usually do. Oh, I'm doing a podcast, we better I've ever taken out. But so many things came to mind for me as you were talking, because when we started this work, the why wasn't different, but I don't think was as deep as what you were just talking about. Right? It was. So for me, it was a little superficial, right, like, library staff say that they in the summer, they help you know, those who aren't able to do paid activities, right and right, supporting youth and systemically marginalized communities by just offering services. And that was sort of an in my mind when we started this work. I was like, No, that's, that's not what you're doing. So I was looking at this very, I don't know, superficially, the right word, but at this level, where it's like, I know, that sounds terrible. I, I can see that. While that is your goal. And you think it's important to reach lots of different communities in order to make sure that youth and families are able to participate and be engaged in activity each other summer. Awesome. That often the case is that really, it's the same youth and families who are participating year round and are not from systemically marginalized community. Right. And so that's where this started in my head. And then in working with you and working with others understanding that there is this collusion, there is this oppression that's actually keeping libraries at that level. Yeah, systemic work we're trying to do is really important because you can't dismantle all of the collusion, the oppression, etc, without getting into the systems. And how I've grown to understand this, in some ways is the why of equitable summer Services is a partly to dismantle systems like yeah, reasons we're doing this is to dismantle the systems, which do not give us the chance to actually bring in systemically marginalized community voices to go out into our communities and really get to know people in the communities to understand what summer should look like, with the community, right? That's what you're talking about that I was like, oh, yeah, I hadn't really articulated in my own head, that idea of, yes, we need to do this, because we need to be realistic in what libraries are really doing in the summer. And if you really think that you know that you want to reach this larger group, then we have to dig deeper into the systems and it can die without that. And that's the biggest challenge for library staff. I think we've seen it's like dismantling these systems or thinking about, like, oh, I don't have time to write. Right, don't have the capacity to do this. Actually, yeah. Let's think about where that comes from. Right. And so right, super fascinating to me, all of a sudden is starting to

and the the dismantling. We were part of that, why is less dismantle and reimagine and recreate Yes. And re envision because if we only dismantle it, we're still in a mess, right? Right. So, you know, there's this simultaneous word that I truly get, and you and I have had these conversations, feels overwhelming, can feel overwhelming, can feel daunting, does feel daunting. And that's fair. And it's also joyous and it's liberating to think Think about how this one make perhaps this one change and maybe how we do registration, you know, got us a little bit closer to our goals of equity around Registration for summer programming for hat perhaps. How is that helping to lead towards dismantling some, some systems and pieces? And also simultaneously helping re envision what that can look like? And how does this one thing, begin to have a ripple effect and lead to additional things? So in our y's, starting with, what can I influence as an individual? What can my team influence? What can we influence when we come together in partnership with community and really, really remembering and holding that? The why is about heart work, right? Like we buy into the why because it it's something we believe it's something that emanates from our very beings. And then the how we get to the Why might shift and vary and our y might grow and deepen. And that might shift, we might have different iterations of our y over time, perhaps for libraries and Linda, you and I encourage folks to think about if you're not sure what your y is, and you're thinking, what is what's my personal why, but also what's my library's? Why? Looking at like, well, what's my library's mission and vision? And how do I pull the why from that? And how can my team lean into that? Right? And where's maybe that aligned with perhaps a community partners? Why, what are individual wise? And how does that align with my own values and beliefs? So lots of ways, I think, also to think about the why. Because understanding the Y can help us get to the how.

Yeah, and can help us think, you know, I think sometimes we do a why why summer services activity in some of the work that we do in often. The why is, seems to come from this place of Savior ism. Right? There's a lot of that, and thinking about your community and the why for your community, right, like, really what's going on? Who do you know, you said, you know, what, how does your why connect to other organizations? Why talk or vested partners? Why talking to people and finding out their why can actually help you identify your why, right, that's another think about that. But I also think why needs to be why the library in this community, this neighborhood, is facilitating summer services. Right is and it's not I know, we go for these global why's like one of the ones we hear all the time is the summer slide, right? Yeah, no, I write really what really is that you want to help youth? And we say, systemically marginalize youth over the summer, be a part of a community learn in gay, whatever, and that will maybe help them to achieve in school next year? We don't know that it's really the case. But you're not going to enjoy the summer slide. Right? And

what we know is that when folks feel like they belong somewhere, right, when folks have a sense, a true sense of belonging, when folks that that supports psychological safety. Yeah, right. And when I feel safe, when I know I belong, when I know My voice matters, when I know the voices of those in my community matter and that my community belongs, and that the library, because we're talking libraries, is part of that is part of making sure that they are not in the community but not part of the community. Right, that we know that those types of things support, social development support, emotional development. So if we're talking about our youth and young people, when our and this is true for adults as well, when I feel like I belong when I feel like I connect when I have meaningful, authentic relationships where people see me and That could be the library staff at my library, right? They're out doing things in our parks or with our, our boys and girls club, or they have a garden at the library, and we're doing things there. Maybe I go to storytime. So I'm seeing my live my library staff in the community and at the library, and there's trusted adults there, there are folks there that are helping me know, I matter. I am important, My voice matters. Those things lead to academic gains. Right now, whether or not the library can say here's the correlation, right? And be able to use that on a data report for potential funders probably not right. And we still know that those things that support that emotional development, that social development actually do lead to academic gains for young people.

Right, when you're confident and comfortable. In who you're serving. You are, of course, you can do better academically. And I'm also realizing, and I wonder if this is part of the systemic challenge is I think people can tell us if this is not accurate, I think people fail to feel like they're why has to be big. Right? You can't have a lie that is building a sense of belonging law in the community, which is actually still pretty big. Right? That's

huge. Yeah,

it's our slide in whatever what they just, I, I actually loved it, I think some more about and talk to people about, you know, what if we focused on the why of summer, like just something really concrete and small? Doesn't? Yeah, it's not small, because the outcome will actually be pretty powerful. But you don't have to end the summer slide. You don't even have to have like, in some I'm using the phrase summer slide, which is something that I actually am not sure about. I'm just trying to say that that's what libraries often talk about. And so I wonder if part of the challenge is, it feels like I have to do something like that people are coming. summer slide library is working on the summer slide as opposed to working on helping young people build confidence. Right, right, just like that. Yeah. And I wonder if that's part of the systemic challenge, because we have had libraries say, you know, we have to have numbers and we have write all of these, like, we have to show 5000 participated or whatever. So if you don't have a large, large sounding, why attached to that need for numbers, it could feel like you're not being successful, which is Yeah,

yeah. And that's, I think, one of the things that can be saddening and disheartening, because I think folks who are working in libraries are often also aware of what you just need, like that big over arching, why sometimes gets lost. And sometimes Lee lends itself to supporting that. That feeling that I don't have time, I don't have capacity, I don't have bandwidth. How are we supposed to do that? Yeah. And can make it hard to lean into where we actually have a decent amount of agency and to lean into and see our spheres of influence. And in some ways, I think that's almost by design, right? Because that is one way that systems of oppression get us to continue to collude, because it's overwhelming, it's daunting, it it can begin to have us feel powerless. And this and when all of those things begin to happen. As humans, we begin to default to status quo, we'll just do what we've always done unable to, even as you said, pull back some of the layers of the why and, and one of the things that we could probably even do is there are spaces where, where sometimes folks do why work, Linda, and what do I want to do? Right? So you create this like statement, what do I want to do? What do we want to do? And then ask yourself why? And when you answer that, ask yourself why again, and do that so that you've asked yourself, why five times yeah, and see what you end up with. And that might be the place to start. So even if you start with like, something feels really big ask yourself why five to And and with your why What are you already doing in your library in your community that supports already supporting your why? Your why doesn't have to start from scratch, it doesn't have to sound super profound, right? Your why doesn't have to have all these big lofty goals, you might have a huge lofty aspiration, you're still going to need small goals to get there. And that might shift. And so thinking about your why, what's the heart? What are you already doing? How are you already living into your why I think it's also important to think about

we will be back in a month and so I'm curious what you're all thinking and we look forward to having another podcast out soon. Thank you look. Yeah,

thank you, Linda and thank you everyone for listening to this inaugural podcast. Bye