Leslie Morishita and our librarian, Susan Jenkins, are working together to write a Department of Neighborhoods Race and Social Justice matching grant application to submit this coming Monday, January 11th. This grant requires a ½ to 1 match (meaning we must provide a 50% match of the funds we request). Volunteer hours count towards the match at $20 per hour. So, every hour you pledge has the potential to leverage $40 of grant funds!
CAN YOU PLEDGE SOME VOLUNTEER HOURS? If so, we need to hear from you this week!
Please email the following to Leslie at lmorishita@interimicda.org:
1. NAME
2. PHONE
3. ADDRESS
2. # OF HOURS YOU PLEDGE
3. TYPE OF WORK YOU WILL DO
Here are some examples of types of volunteer work: serve on the project steering committee (WE NEED PEOPLE FOR THIS!), research potential library resources, catalog and shelve resources, coordinate student activities, community outreach, event coordinating.
The project we’re proposing is the expansion of our school’s library collections through a community building process focused in 2 areas:
1. Grow the Antiracist Library - Establish Latino, Native American, GLBT antiracist collections; additional areas of focus based on student, teacher, and community input.
2. Establish a Global Education* focus for the general library - to support global education and to tie into social justice teaching in our classrooms. This is a natural extension of the AS#1 Antiracist Library which includes foundational resources for understanding racism in the U.S. and underscores local struggles for racial justice. Global education is grounded in the concept of global connections and commonalities all humans share; it challenges stereotypes and simplification of other cultures; fosters the habit of seeking multiple perspectives (especially those whose voices are rarely heard in mainstream texts or media); and fosters understanding of power, discrimination, conflict and injustice. And, it fosters getting students to learn about, work with and appreciate their classmates of different races, religions, national origins or linguistic backgrounds. (And, it values cross cultural immersion, which ties in well with our plans for an AS#1 field trip to Hiroshima in spring 2011:-))
The process of growing the library will move us along the path towards establishing an antiracist culture at the school. Our Antiracist and Global Education library can serve as the tangible core around which teaching, learning, community building, and antiracist organizing activities revolves.
Funds will be requested for library resources and supplies, and maybe some funds for events and activities, maybe some funds for video and digital recording equipment (to be inclusive of oral traditions, and to support student projects like interviews and such). Do you have any suggestions here?
Please let Leslie or Susan know if you have any questions or suggestions. This is a work in progress!
* “Global education prepares young people to understand and interact within a culturally diverse and globally interconnected world. Its content includes the study of world cultures and religions, world literature, the interrelatedness of world history, global issues, global economic, technological, environmental, and political systems, non-state global actors, and cross-cultural communication skills,” Dr. Merry Merryfield
