Blog

01/17/2012

A library is the main staple of a community, where people come together, learn, share, respect and connect. The Aurora Public Library provides opportunities for all those elements and so much more.

Three days on the 20th floor at the ICIRR office downtown…three days of brand new information that needs to be internalized…three days of personal sharing that brought strangers together. At first the prospect of such intensive training was daunting, having just left my previous job the Friday before, but the support was overwhelming!

Wow! I had completed not one, not two, but three ICIRR trainings for the Uniting America campaign. We had a chance to meet a large bulk of the talented ICIRR staff, who shared with us their strategies for organizing, recruiting, and reaching out, all very relevant lessons to the work we will be doing in our communities.

This past weekend I presented at Be Your Own Benefit (BYOB), a concert fundraiser, put together by some Filipino-American college students from Elgin Community College to raise money for those affected by the recent natural disasters in the Philippines.  Melissa Ypil, the producer of this successful event, was gracious enough to give me 10 minutes to talk about Uniting America.