Year-long Public Innovation training opportunity

For Immediate Release
Wed, 09/04/2013

Contact:

Brian Russell

Program Coordinator

Public Programs Office

312-280-5298

brussell@ala.org

CHICAGO - Continuing the collaboration between The Harwood Institute and the American Library Association on The Promise of Libraries Transforming Communities Initiative, a three-day Harwood Institute Public Innovators Lab designed especially for libraries kicks off a year of coaching and webinar support. The three-day immersion in the Harwood practice, Oct. 28-30, 2013, at the District of Columbia Public Library Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, will be followed by one year of scheduled coaching support for library teams from a Harwood certified coach, plus six live webinars to support and reinforce the learning from the Lab. 

The Harwood Public Innovators Lab grounds participants in turning outward and results in authentically engaging communities in real and lasting change. Librarians and key library stakeholders in libraries of all types—public, academic, school and special libraries—are encouraged to register. Participants will learn how to:

  • achieve community impact and accelerate strategic organizational change through community conversations;
  • authentically engage with the community to deeply understand them and make more informed choices;
  • leverage their resources in a way that creates impact on a specific issue while building the conditions for change;
  • reorient themselves toward the public and create new opportunities for community impact;
  • align mission, resources and strategies to the community’s capacity so that efforts at community changes will have a greater chance of succeeding.

Participants must register by Sept. 30. Teams from libraries are encouraged. The cost is $2,500 for the first person from a single organization and $1,500 for each additional person from that organization. More information, including how to register, is available at http://www.ala.org/transforminglibraries/year-long-public-innovation-training-opportunity.

The Promise of Libraries Transforming Communities Initiative is the first step in building a sustainable and scalable national plan for library-led community engagement.