Lead the Way: Libraries at the Heart of Community Engagement

Post-COVID, our library experienced a significant increase in disruptive teen behaviors in our library and we also noticed a significant rise in food insecurity. We piloted a project with donated prepacked snacks where teens were offered a snack upon entering the teen space prior to engaging with any of the programming or resources in the space. Within a short timespan we saw a significant decline in disruptive behavior and our usage numbers for the space increased. We worked quickly to gain community resources and developed a nutrition component to the program to educate the teens on food choices and how bodies process nutrients. We gained data to show the gap in the community in providing direct food to teens through partnership with local food banks who discovered that they weren't serving teens. Attendees will learn how we took the problem of poor teen behavior from incident reports and addressed it with fighting food insecurity. They will also learn how to engage and advocate with community partners and funders around a service not often provided in libraries, but a population that is welcomed in libraries more than elsewhere in the community and lastly they will learn how to change the message of what a library is to build a community of support around a common community challenge.