Would you like to build community relationships? Do you want to be ready for crises that may affect youth and families in your community? If so, you’ll want to consider participating in the University of Maryland led Ready NOW: Supporting Youth and Families During Crisis initiative. In its second year, Ready NOW is integrating learnings from year 1 of the initiative and expands on work that took place in 2020 during the height of the pandemic. That work led to the publication of Library Staff as Public Servants: A Field Guide for Preparing to Serve Communities in Times of Crisis. The Field Guide outlines four Essential Tasks that libraries and their staff need to embrace to serve historically marginalized youth and families successfully. The Ready NOW project team is now recruiting library staff from across the United States to join in on the IMLS-funded next phase of the initiative.
Participating library staff will benefit from the opportunity to:
• Build strategies for working with community partners in support of historically marginalized youth and families
• Gain knowledge of how to prepare, with community partners, for crisis situations
• Attend a series of participatory design training sessions to gain skills in community engagement, co-creation, iteration, and re-imagining systems and structures
• Design materials for use by others across the US working to serve their communities during emergencies
Staff from 13 libraries across the United States will be selected to work with their state library agency to participate in year two of this initiative. A $2000 stipend to use in support of learning about community and building crisis related services will be provided for selected libraries.
The deadline to apply for the Year 2 cohort is July 31, 2024. If you have any questions regarding the field guide, the program, or the application process, contact the Ready NOW Team at readynow@umd.edu.