Good morning. Good afternoon wherever you are as you're attending this webinar. We're really, really delighted that you've joined this. My name is Anthony Chow, the director of the San Jose State iSchool. I wanted to welcome everyone to the second installment of the iSchool speaker series and final activity and celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. The iSchool is committed to understanding and honoring the incredible diversity of our nation and we're delighted to present you with today's speakers. It's a great pleasure to be able to honor and celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month by providing such high quality programming. And we have a big event also planned for Native American Heritage Month starting in November as well. So I wanted to thank my colleague Michelle Villagran, who has is also the chair of our diversity committee and helped us organize today's session. So let me turn it over to Michelle. Thank you. Thank you Anthony. So again, I'm Dr. Michelle Villagran, the chair of the iSchool diversity committee and assistant professor in the School of Information. And I also want to welcome you to today's webinar collaborating for success, a Hispanic Heritage Month case study. This is being recorded and the recording will be available on our iSchool YouTube channel and we have a diversity playlist where all of our webinars related to diversity live. So I will place that link in the chat momentarily. And if you do have questions that will be monitoring the chat throughout. So please place your comments questions, ideas, resources, anything you'd like to share with attendees in the chat. I would now like to introduce our speakers for today. My name is Nadia Martinez, Neighborhood Services or Immigrant Services Manager, and Nadia Rendon Spanish Services Coordinator with the Biblioteca Pública de Denver, Denver Public Library. They will chat with us about how to successfully leverage collaboration. So this is really focuses on focusing on collaborations to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. I will now turn it over to Nikonor. Hello, and thank you, Dr. Chao for inviting us to share our experience on this fantastic Hispanic Heritage Month program that we've done this year. And okay so again my name is Nikonor Diaz, Neighborhood Services Manager for the Denver Public Library. I'm also an Immigrant Services Manager as well. I'm going to let Nadia now briefly introduce herself and then I'll come back to kind of give an outline of the presentation and what we're going to be talking about today. And then Nadia and I will just kind of take turns highlighting some of the events that we've done this past month and highlighting the collaboration that we've done with internal departments and community, community partners. And then we'll just have some time for all of you to be able to ask us some questions. Good morning everybody thank you for having us. My name is Nadia Rendon and I'm the Spanish Services Coordinator for the Denver Public Library. Thank you for being here. Thanks Nadia. A little bit of historical context before we start with our presentation and I want to talk about a couple of things. I've been with the Denver Public Library since 2014 so it's been a little over seven years now. And this is actually, since I started working at the library, I think this is one of the most well received Hispanic Heritage Month program series that we have done. It hasn't always been this like this. And I want to share some of the struggles that we had in the past and how we got to where we are today. To give you an idea, Nadia's position is relatively new, newish. I think we created it maybe about four years ago as the Spanish Services Coordinator, and she can talk a little bit more about her role within the system. But so keep that in mind with this position didn't exist before. Along with the creation of Nadia's position, we also created an internal working group that's called the Spanish Customer Experience Team, which is a group comprised by various staff members throughout the library, where we take a real close look at what is the experience of a Spanish speaker when they use the library and that's covering all different types of usage, whether it's calling a branch to renew an item, whether it's accessing our online resources, programming. I hope that that is a whole and looked at where we had gaps and where there were opportunities for improvement, which one of those areas was programming again in the context of leading to this amazing Hispanic Heritage Month program. And I also wanted to talk a little bit about that we have never, we haven't always done things the right way. The next story that I'm going to share, I'm ashamed that I've been I'm actually sharing this, but I think it is a learning moment, because this is what happens when we have departments within our library systems that work in silos and don't collaborate and assume that they are experts in everything. Four to five years ago our communications and community engagement department or marketing department, which is in charge of creating and this engage magazine which has a list of all of the programs that the library offers. Decided that it would be a great idea on the cover of their October engage magazine to have the picture of a person with Dia de los Muertos makeup on. And as the caption right boo, it's scary and this is Halloween. And I was deeply embarrassed that our library system would produce this and shared on Facebook and I think it was one of our most commented Facebook posts. Because people were just very upset that the library would produce this and none of us knew that this was happening. So here we have a department that's inside load and didn't reach out that decided that this would be a good idea and and it wasn't obviously but we learned from that. And also, another reason why we're focusing on Hispanic Heritage Month is because libraries have, I believe that libraries owe their entire community services and programs. And that includes their Spanish speaking community and we need to make sure that everyone that we provide access to resources and materials and services to everyone in our library system in our community regardless of what language they speak. We know that this isn't often the case. I used to work for another library system that they often the message would be like well they don't use the library so why should we divert our resources to serving them if they don't use the library and I feel like what we're going to talk about today really demonstrates that we are the ones who have to try and put resources into connecting with our Spanish speaking communities. And it's not that they don't use the library because they don't want to. It's most likely because the library is really not connecting with the Spanish speaking community and we're not producing the services and programs that they need. And in order to find out what that is, we have to build a relationship with that community and we have to collaborate with them. So hopefully we'll be able to demonstrate that today in this webinar. Yes, thank you for sharing that Nikonar. I wanted to show the what Nikonar was talking about. I'm going to stop sharing the screen. And I'm going to share the post that Nikonar was talking about that was very culturally insensitive. This is the one you were talking about Nikonar right. Yeah, that's the one. So we did this in October and we're saying it's a spooky month ahead and we're talking about Halloween and the image reflects doesn't reflect that and it was through some of the comments. It was just incredible and I'm glad that they kept it up just as a reminder of how bad things can go when we don't collaborate for success. Well, thank you, Nikonar for that introduction of the and history of Hispanic Heritage Month with the library, the Republic Library. So I'm just going to talk a little about the whole dynamic that brought us to have a very successful Hispanic Heritage Month in DPL, the Republic Library. At the beginning of the year, or maybe at the end of last year, Nikonar is my supervisor. So he said that the communications and community engagement department wanted to highlight some Hispanic Heritage Month, actually the whole month from September 15 to October 15. And we wanted to do something big this year because last year because of the pandemic. We had one program, which was an online program we had hired a DJ to play from a brewery from a Latino brewery. And that was the only thing we did for Hispanic Heritage Month so we really wanted to come back like with the, you know, full strength. So when he asked me if I wanted to take the lead on this effort, of course I say yes. And it is worth mentioning that when we started planning this month, we were not offering any in person programs and everything was still in the air. Even now, the library is not offering many in person programs. But we are, but not many. So this was like a one, like a very special thing for us, for our department, for the Cooper Inclusive Department, and for, of course, for Hispanic Services. In April, I invited the community to, I made the call to invite the community, the member public library system through our staff webpage to join a task force. And many people answered the call they emailed me they even called me hey I want to be part of this and I invited them to like an initial brainstorming meeting. We had staff from many departments and positions. We had 10 services, adults and older adult services, early learning, librarians, shelters and other staff from different branches. And the ideas started to flow. So we talked about having like salsa classes, arts and crafts, tours, concerts, food, and many more, many more things. And anybody who wanted to commit to do something had the opportunity to do it. One of our newest librarians in the system came out with this idea, a bilingual library card. I think he's in the, he's watching this right now. So Nicholas. Hi. So originally, we thought about having a design contest by local artists, but because of time constraints, we didn't. And this librarian, his name is Nicholas Cabrera. He worked on selecting the design. He partnered with the community, communication and community engagement department. And to get the right design, he worked with our graphic designers. And the communications department worked on the new wording for the back of the cards. We worked on translating it in a way that was easy and friendly to read because we didn't want to have like lots of wording and such a small piece of plastic. And also the manager of the Books and Borrowing department agreed to pay for the printing of the cards. So it was like a partnership between different departments. The planning, oh, there is Nicholas saying hi. The planning took time and effort and partnership among different departments, but at the end we were able to offer our community, not only a month full of programs, events, activities, and we're also able to offer the first bilingual card offered by Denver Public Library. And I'm reading on the chat the Spanish only card is a great idea. So what we did, we distributed and we promoted this library card from September 15 to October 15, and then we took it away. So we're going to bring it back next year until all the cards, until all the cards run out. And we have a question on the chat. I don't know exactly how many cards were given out yet, but we'll share them later with you. That's one of the things we need to improve to because our supplies department who supplies the cards and supplies and supplies. Yeah, all the different designs, the regular ones and the Hispanic Heritage Month library cards. They only deliver once a week. So for next year, it's a promise I will take care of the distribution myself, because we ran out of some branches and we were sharing with them on branches. The most popular design was the flex design. Oops, where am I? Yeah, here. So I'm going to pass this to Nikonor. This was one of the first programs that we have at the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month. And was also hosted by Nicolás Cabrera, the same person who came up with the idea of the library cards. Nikonor. Thank you. And yeah, I just want to mention that those library cards were super, super, super popular. And we had them at display at all the branches and when we would do programs like the genealogy one that I'm going to talk a little bit about now. Folks would see those library cards and just want to get a new library card. They were willing to replace their old one so they could have the new design. And it's definitely one of the things that will continue doing for future Hispanic Heritage Months. So, one of the programs that we worked on during the Hispanic Heritage Months was a genealogy program that again, Nikolás Cabrera, who was very involved in Hispanic Heritage Month programming, decided to take on. I do believe we do have a genealogy, a Western history and genealogy department out of our central library. However, and Nikolás can correct me, I don't think that we had ever done a genealogy program in Spanish for Spanish speakers. So this is a good example of how we can leverage the expertise that our staff have and collaborate with branches to come up with unique programs. He says correct. It was the first genealogy workshop at DPL because again, we take it back to that notion that Spanish speakers are our community as well and our customers. And if we are providing English only genealogy programs, then we're not doing justice to our Spanish speaking communities and we should be able to provide those, particularly in this area where we know that genealogy work is so important for Spanish families and Spanish speaking, our Spanish speaking community to be able to retrace their roots. And Nikolás was able to see the importance of this program and decided to go ahead and offer it. I mentioned that it was encouraging to see that people were interested in their roots and their heritage. And I, again, I think it was a really, really neat program that hopefully will be able to continue doing outside of Hispanic Heritage Month and be able to have it on an ongoing basis, which again, I feel like this is part of, in order for library systems to be able to succeed in programming, you have to be able to take a risk. And I think that's probably the hardest thing to convince your administration of is reassigning resources so that you can take a risk, a calculated risk, on trying to do a program. And if the program works, being able to adapt that into an ongoing system. And if, and if the program doesn't work, that that's okay. But you're not wasting resources. You're learning from it so that you can improve and then move on to trying something else. That's a good question, Martina. I, I, I know that we use Ancestree. I'm not entirely sure, Nikolás, what you used in terms for the Spanish genealogy program. I'm sure he'll be able to answer that question. I don't know if Ancestree is actually has any Spanish or if Nikolás just had to do some on the fly translation as he was doing the Spanish genealogy program. Next. So a couple of other collaborations that we had as well. We have a K through fifth grade services coordinator, and they have this program called book explorers. The book explorer program is, it's a free program where school kids from kindergarten through fifth grade can just grab these bags that typically come with a book and a craft kit and then they can take these home and read the book and then do a craft that is related to the the book. So for particularly for Hispanic Heritage Month, we partnered with a community group called Museo de las Américas, and we had Carmen Lomas Garza, who is known for her colorful and detailed illustrations of memorable experiences with her family and their traditions, and they worked with Carmen to create the, the kit for, for kids to take home. So that was a really also Museo de las Américas is a pretty, pretty prominent museum that is located in what is now known in Denver as the Santa Fe Arts District. And so I would recommend, you know, if you're thinking about doing something like this to really do some research in your community to see if there is an organization out there like Museo where you could create some sort of artistic partnership. And then on the right hand side we have portraits. And so what we did for the portraits is we partnered with a local photographer called his name was Armando Canado, and they documented families in a formal studio so he set everything up for families to be able to take these pictures these family portraits. But the little twist was that he worked with youth to give them the opportunity to capture their families pictures. So while he set up the studio and everything he kind of walked the teams that were interested in participating in this program how to capture their families. And this was the way that the artists wait to celebrate Latino families and provide a group of portraits to families who might not necessarily have the opportunity to create to have these family portraits taken. And we wanted to be able to provide that for them. This, this one was, so I participate. I want to preface by saying that Nadia and the Hispanic Heritage Month planning group are the ones who did 99% of the work like they really worked so hard to create this amazing series. I participated in a couple of them. You can see my picture on the top left in this cooking series. Which I thought was a great idea and when Nadia mentioned that this was one of the ideas they had from the group I was like sign me up. I'll do it. We'll make this happen. Where the idea was to grab a couple of staff members to be able to cook something that they brought from home. So I chose to make empanadas in a certain way that my mom used to make them when I was little, and I've brought that tradition over with me here in Denver. And the idea was to have staff members record themselves while they were cooking. And we had our cooking series consisted of making empanadas from Argentina, chumpe from El Salvador, arepas from Venezuela, and then Nadia de Tamales from Mexico. And I had a lot of fun doing this. So we would make the empanadas we would film them and then we invited folks to come to one of our branches where we showed the video and then connected again collaborating with a local restaurant and in my case we collaborated with Mari Empanada to buy empanadas so that the participants could try the food and I wish they could have tasted my empanadas because I'm very proud of them. But obviously we can't do that. And we have to follow all of our food regulations so we have to buy that from a restaurant. One of my most favorite memories from that program is a gentleman after the program was over he came up and he was just so happy that we were able to share this with him and he's like this is my this is the first time in my life that I'm trying an empanada and that was just so much fun. And this is probably, it can be a little, it's a fun program this one can probably require a little bit of resources if you are connecting with a local restaurant to be able to provide that food but it's definitely, I didn't really know what to expect when I when we when I signed up to do this but for my empanada program we had over 5560 people and the community really enjoyed it and loved it and if there's one that you would like to try next year I would definitely suggest trying to do a cooking series. I think we will be repeating the cooking yeah not not just saying yes. We'll have to use different chefs next time and change up the recipes a little bit but folks love food a food can help connect communities, we know that we love being able to provide food in our programs. And it's definitely worthwhile. The cooking series was kind of hybrid in the sense that we recorded the videos and they're up on our YouTube page so if you if you go to the Denver Public Libraries YouTube page you can see all four videos. And then it did have an in person component where we showed the video of the cooking and then we just talked about empanadas in general and different cooking styles and they would ask me what my favorite empanada was not thinking of Argentina but what other empanadas I've tried. We talked about different types of empanadas and how some are savory and some are sweet and it was just folks were just really engaged and some people shared their anecdotes of traveling to Argentina and tasting the empanadas. Yeah, so it had that double component where the the cooking part was recorded and online but then actual discussion of the cooking was done in person with samples from Maria empanada. And then the other thing that we do throughout the month is we adapt our story times and crafts we ongoing we have ongoing story times happening every month but what we try to do is be intentional about the books that we select when we're doing Hispanic heritage month to be able to select Latinx authors or Spanish or do more Spanish only story times. And again this is something that I would that I wish would be constantly happening throughout the year not just focusing on it during Hispanic heritage month. But these things take time these things are things that require an organizational cultural change. And the more that Nadia and folks like Nicholas can do these types of programs in Spanish. The more our library staff and our library administration see the impact that it has in our community, then the more we'll be able to do this outside of Hispanic heritage month and just include this in a regular regular programming series. A couple of other programs that we did again, and putting emphasis in the collaboration on the left we have the bingo musical, which we do, we have a, again, Nadia Nadia is the great collaborator and the one who makes all these connections within our community. It's very important that if you want to do this I would suggest start going out to the community right now and building these relationships. The bingo musical we do it at a Hispanic brewery called services services and we've collaborated with them in the past they have a very, very big space that can accommodate a lot of people. They allow us to use the space for free their equipment is is set. They have all the equipment set up for this type of performance where we can. What we do is we Nadia created a list of musical videos that we play for five 10 seconds and then we print out bingo cards for everyone with the names of those music videos and those music those artists. And we just have the songs playing on a loop and you know people show bingo we have some. It's totally free. What's great about doing something like this at a brewery is that you might have some folks that go to the brewery for the for the library event because they read about this, but you're also going to engage with a lot of people that had no idea that this was happening. But realize that it's so much fun that they weren't expecting to go have a beer, play bingo and win a prize or what a $25 gift card to the brewery. And I think that's part also of how we can make successful programs is finding going to where the folks are, they probably didn't go here specifically for the bingo musical, but for sure they left thinking that if this happens again, they will come to this program. This is all 100% free. And another thing that we didn't do this year but it's something that we could do next year, we typically do this for another program called winter of reading is engaging with breweries or other restaurants where folks show their library card. They can get a discount off their menu. That's something that also helps build relationships with community partners. Right hand side we have a memory cafe, which is another program that the library does once a week for, you know, older adults who are experiencing memory loss in for Hispanic Heritage Month we collaborated with. We have an older adults program coordinator her name is Amy Delpo, and she runs these memory cafes. So what we did for this one is we played Loteria, and, you know, just changed it up a little bit from what they're used to doing every week and created a fun Loteria event for them to just, you know, be able to play and explained about, you know, the history of Loteria because it's just about showing up and saying we're going to play Loteria, but giving some context and some meaning and the history of, you know, where Loteria comes from and all that stuff. And it was pretty fun seeing older adults who maybe like they have never even been familiar with any word in Spanish and they were trying to repeat the words that we're saying, you know, El Diablito, La Rana. So it was pretty fun being there with them. Other other activities with it was Loteria Mexicana. Back in April, when we were not doing in person programming, the Spanish customer experience team, we have a team for to offer good customer experience. And the older adult services department came together to offer a game of Loteria Mexicana online. And it was very popular, but we were not reaching the community we wanted to reach because it was geared towards older adults who spoke Spanish and they are less likely to access online resources events and programs. So as soon as the library gave us the green light to switch to in person programming, we switch to in person programming to do Loteria Mexicana in one of the branches every month. Now we're doing two every month. But for Hispanic Heritage Month, we offer some branches to host some Loteria games and the results were great. You can see here in the picture is what we're trying to reach older adults who speak Spanish, coming together and winning some of those cute prices that we had there. But many of them were like not as interested in the prices as they were just happy to be there with their community. We have six branches doing Loteria games. One of them even did a lucha libre Loteria game, they created their own Loteria with the pictures of luchadores and it was, it was pretty fun. But this was thanks to the Spanish customer experience team and the older adult services team who were able to come together to offer the services. And on your left, you can see this band, this band is called Los Mucachetes. They're a Chicano local band who play music and English and Spanish. We asked them to only play in Spanish for these events and they did. They did some slum poetry and they really bring the dance within you out. And I don't like to dance, but they bring that up to you. And so we are opening a new library in an area called Art Park. And this area has different organizations in it. They have the Red Line Arts, they have the Zine Library. And there was a grand opening for the actual area, not for the library. So we wanted to bring some like a touch of Hispanic Heritage Month to the event. So we hired the Los Mucachetes to bring some Chicano music, the Chicano music in Spanish. And we also had paletas. The paletas were very popular too. You guys can want to do some events. This is pretty fun for the kids. They usually rent. You can buy the paletas and they let you borrow the cart to bring it with you. Thank you for those questions. Yes, Michelle. This time we didn't do any surveying except for older adults. But it wasn't a work. They just came up super late and we didn't have time to do it. So we had to do it again. Another promise for next year. And there is a comment that the lotteria has problems to some of the depictions in the cards. The new lotterias, they come already changed. Some of the illustrations that are a little, that are not culturally sensitive, were changed. We have two new pictures on them. One is El Molcajete and the other one is El Trompo. The images replaced El Borracho and El Negrito. So if you go to a store or if you order them online, probably the ones you're going to buy are going to be the new versions without those two depictions. Millenia Lotteria. That's pretty fun too. Also the mermaid, the sirena, it used to be more graphic. So the sirena is wearing a top. So you can buy it and you can have kids playing too. This is one of the biggest events we have. In order to do this, we had to partner with Teatro Aztlan. Aztlan Theater is a historic place in the Santa Fe Art District. It was opened by a couple, an older couple. The owner's name is Tim Correa and he's about 90 years old. He still works at the bar every first Friday when they open. And his wife is in the early 80s as well and she helps at the bar too. But Aztlan Theater has two sections. One is a bar section and the other one is the theater. They hadn't opened the theater in a long time. And the musician we had played there, he had played at the bar before and he had never played at the theater. They let us use the theater for free just because they wanted to support the library. We just had to pay the performers but the theater was free. It was very successful. In that photo you can see Nicanor is eating an empanada from Chile. It's not an empanada from Argentina. That's why he looks a little mad but they were really good. So we offer a little of everything. We offer free music and entertainment. And we offer free food. We had nachos. We had empanadas from Chile. People who came to the event, they only had to buy their own drinks. So I think that was good for also the owners of the theater. The music we had playing that night was music from Chile. That's why we decided to get empanadas from Chile too. People were dancing, people were having fun. We had a resource table that Nicanor was stuffing. And we had the communications department helping us promote it through the event, through our social media and also our two publications that we have. We have one publication in Spanish. It's called Conexiones. And we have one publication in English. It's called Engage. And we have them come in every first of the month. And they had events and articles that our own staff can write. And so everything that was going on at the library. We also have some newsletters that people get in the mail. And those are English only for now. So hopefully next year we can have something in Spanish as well. Yes. And I'm going to go to this Calaveras de Azúcar slide. This Calaveras de Azúcar program was done thanks to our partnership with Metro State University of Denver. The Journey to Our Heritage team. We have been partnering with them for about four or five years. And they always help us bring programming that is like related through our Hispanic heritage. That's why the name Journey to Our Heritage. So thanks to them we were able to offer Calaveras de Azúcar program. It was very popular. It was so popular that we had to turn people away at the end because we ran out of about 150 Calaveras de Azúcar we had for participants. In partnership with them we also offer some La Llorona related program. And we had different storytellers coming to tell stories. I told the story. The community was able to like volunteer to come and tell us a story. Nicolas, again, he was here. He also tells the story that he wrote. So this partnership with Journey to Our Heritage from Metro Denver has been very successful. And also tomorrow we have a book opening, a book reception from local authors and we are partnering with them as well. Thanks Nadia. So I hope we were able to convey some of the collaborative aspects that make the Hispanic Heritage Month. In my view such a success. There's still a little bit more work that we need to do in order to wrap this up. The first steps are for Nadia to reach out to library staff members through our staff web, which is our intranet and allow staff members to provide feedback on this process so then we can take that feedback and improve for next year. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the evaluation process and the library system. DPL right now is in a place where we're trying to implement better evaluation practices and we're using a survey tool called Alcamer to be able to do that and we're actually hiring a new data person. That's not the technical term, but that's how I remember it. So hopefully for next year, we will be able to be a little bit more focused more on the evaluation part since we've been able to figure out the programming part this year. And you have a little bit of up to questions and comments now. Nick I know what I say a question the chat, how supportive is your library commission or board of your efforts. They're very supportive. One of the things that we didn't talk about in this presentation because we didn't really know how to fit it in is one of the things that the library has done over the last 20, 20 years is a Latino Community Service Awards. And these awards take place during Hispanic Heritage Month, and we put together a committee that reviews nominations and nominees. And we have library board commissions in that committee. So we and I don't want to say we involve them in Hispanic Heritage Month programming because all the work that we do is mostly for the library. They are involved in Hispanic Heritage Month programming through the Latino Community Service Awards. So they recognize that this is an important thing that the library should be doing, and they participate through those awards. And I mean it also helps that our board. I'm not sure if he's the president now but I know he was the president but he's still in the in the library board Carlos Martinez is the founder of the Latino Forum here in Colorado, or he's the direct he's very involved with Latino forum so they they know that this is very important for the library to be able to provide these programs for Spanish speaking communities. So they're totally on board. A follow up with several other questions do your friends help fund these programs. No. However, I will say that we haven't asked for funding from them. They haven't offered but we haven't asked, but it could be. I don't know that we need to ask them for funding. Maybe maybe we can test this theory out next year and reach out to them to see if they would be interested in sponsoring, maybe some of some of the events at Raises, or maybe even if we do something again at the Escalante theater to be able to provide some some compensation to the owner for allowing us to use the space. And we can report back again next year how that interaction goes with our friends foundation. That sounds great maybe we'll have you next year then we'll do this every year update. A couple more questions. What percentage of your staff, your board and your community are Latin X, Latina, Latino or Hispanic. From the board. I think off the top of my head. So, unless Nadia is looking at the website right now, I want to say that maybe we have one or two members. One Carlos Carlos Martinez. From staff. I want to say because we've lost a lot of staff members and I think the majority of the staff members that we lost were probably Spanish speaking staff members. I think at one point we had about 140 Spanish speaking staff members out of 600. And we're probably at a hovering at around 100 right now. There's a pretty big blow for the library system there is one branch that I started working at the library the ethnic park branch where where I started there were six Spanish speaking staff members at the branch and right now we're down to just one. I think we've taken a hit in the staffing size area and I can, if my memory serves me from the last census, I think about 38% of the Denver community identifies as Hispanic or Latino. So it's a pretty big chunk of the community. And obviously our staff needs to reflect that so we definitely need to have about four to 250 staff members. If not more and definitely more representation in our administration as well. So a follow up to that for students or even recent alumni or recent graduates, do you have any job openings right now. We do have openings, and we're going to be hiring more librarians. But yeah, if any of you that are on the list are interested in applying for any of the jobs that DPL has opening. My email address is on there I welcome you to reach out to me set up a Google meet or zoom meeting I'm happy to talk to you about the position about some of the expectations. Try to give you as much information as I can for you to be able to make an informed decision whether this is the place where you want to work or not obviously we would love to have the more Spanish speakers we can have in our library system the better. But I am happy to to have a conversation with anyone who's interested in pursuing employment with the Denver Public Library. I have one of my own questions. I know we talked about, you know, successes here but I'm curious about one if there was any resistance, maybe amongst staff or even community partners even your, your communities you serve or any obstacles. I'm sure with each of their programs there might have been something but is there anything that stood out to you that really was a true obstacle that presented challenges and any of these programs. I have a thought but I want to know I want to see if Nadia wants to share from her experience first. I was really help or supportive landmark most of the events this month and everybody was very willing to help support and participate in being part of this effort. I didn't even encounter any like blocks on the road to do this at all. So it was fairly. Yes, it was, but it was fairly smooth. We, you know, we didn't get any backlash from personally with the work that I was doing and they didn't get any backlash from any part of the communities that they agree with celebrating this. And I see Nicholas made a comment about the library card design was tricky, wanting to contest with the community but because of time constraints using staff designs instead well maybe next year plan ahead and there'll be more time and then the community can be involved. Are there other questions I don't I think we got every question in the chat and I don't have other questions you've addressed all of mine. Nicholas, I think the design with the flags was very well liked. It was a favorite of everybody. Definitely, definitely. Really quickly to add to your last question Michelle. Our library system from the time that we posted that horrible Facebook post from engage to where we are today has grown. The community, the marketing department, the staff that made that post happen from the community department no longer work with the Denver Public Library. And oftentimes some of the obstacles that we had would come from that particular department in the sense that they wouldn't want to promote programs they didn't want to give us flexibility to promote promotional designs and they also were very much, we had some issues doing some translation work as well around our program. And there were very much a department that was like no no no we're not going to do this we're not going to do this we're not going to do this. After that, we hired a new director for community communications and community engagement her name is Erica Martinez. And she really helped to turn that department around to a collaborative department where this idea of the library cards we would have not been able to do that three years ago, because the department would have said, kind of this message that probably other folks know we're not going to spend our resources on that it's not worth it, we like that that's not what we're here for to what our current communications and marketing department will say is like yes let's give it a try. Let's print, let's buy 10,000 10,000 cards and see how it goes and then you know if it doesn't go well fine well we'll improve for next year, but they're willing to take that risk, which I think is always going to be the first step in creating these successful programs and connecting with our communities. Thank you Nika nor I think to you know there's always, you know change is a constant and there's always room for improvement. What you've really highlighted, or what I've heard today it's about community who is your community. How can you really provide valuable and insightful highlighting programs that really connect with your community but also the importance and the value of the partnerships and collaborating whether it's internal or external agencies or community partners out there to ensure you have successful programs, and making it where it's a value to the community beyond even the library so Denver as a whole going beyond even maybe your local city. I really appreciate that message that came through for me and tying it to culture and our heritage and who we are. So great work. Are there other questions or comments we have just a few minutes. Last comment, our new marketing manager. At the beginning last year, we made a mistake on one of our flyers when we translated. So the flare came out really bad. And I told her I don't think you should go out to the public. And she said, you're right, equity is expensive and we're going to pay the price. So this, I think that's a new a new model that the communications department has been taking to support our efforts. That's great. That's great.  Actually, I do have a question. So we were, Nick nor and Nadia for you. We were talking before the session about kind of that moment of truth where oftentimes libraries are in a situation where they're not really connected very well with the community. Therefore the resources that they do have are not being used very well. And then oftentimes it's easy to justify not putting resources into it because we have that situation. So could you both speak to maybe library directors or library systems that hopefully will watch this video or our attendance now? How do you commit and how do you break that little vicious cycle between lack of usage, therefore not putting more resources into it in order to actually meet the needs of the community? I think there's a couple of things that if a library director is watching this that they should consider. I think first and foremost is that they should trust their staff members. Nadia is the person who is out in the community and building those connections. So if she comes to me and says, Nick nor I need money to do this program, I'm not going to question her. I've hired her to do a job. She's doing the job and I'm going to place trust that she knows what's best and that she's done her homework and she's connected with the community. And I would invite library directors and library managers to participate in these programs to attend the events that their staff are planning to be able to. If I wouldn't have gone to the Estalan theater, the closing, I wouldn't have seen the relationship that Nadia had not only with the owner of the theater, but also with the band that was playing. It was a friendly relationship. It was a relationship of collaboration. They back each other up that they know how important this is for the library. And I was able to see that because I volunteered to participate in the event and that's unbelievably important for library directors to be able to see this. And also to understand that it's going to take some time and you have to divert resources and it's not a one time only program. Nobody showed up. We're never doing this again. It takes time to do the first program to get that word amount for the first program. Your customers, your participants will double next year and then double and continue to grow. You have to put some work into it and you have to dedicate resources. Wonderful. Nadia, any any thoughts? Yes, of course. Especially for public libraries. Remember, we are getting paid with taxpayers money to serve the community. So you have to serve the community is like our ethical responsibility to do that. That's fantastic. Well, so in conclusion, I want to thank everyone, Michelle, Nicanor, Nadia, in particular for your expertise and participation. This is the iSchool with great pride is sponsoring this again to provide these very important conversations. And so I think it's a good way to conclude this conversation and Hispanic Heritage Month and that really what we were talking about in the end is return on investment. What are you investing in order to expect the return? And I think that that really is a very, very poignant Nicanor and Nadia. So thank you very much for joining us. And since Michelle kind of helped put all this together, Michelle, I'm going to give you the last word and gracias. Thank you. Gracias a todos. Thank you everyone for attending. And I really a shout out to Nicanor and Nadia for all of the great work you're doing, the ideas. And hopefully for those that listen or are here today, can capture some of them and try to replicate or adopt, I would say and adapt to their own communities. So thank you again for your expertise. We appreciate both of you and all of your support with this program today. Thank you. Thank you. Take care everyone. Bye bye.


The North-South divide of affluence and poverty, of plenty and survival, of economies strong, resilient, and economies weak, defenseless. Of countries in control of their destiny, and countries very vulnerable, lacking in functional sovereignty. The South epitomizes diversity, countries very small and very large, with natural resources abundant and meagre. Differences in cultures, political systems and ideologies, differences in structure of economies and level of development. Yet in this diversity there is a basic unity which transcends their differences, a shared identity and common aspirations. And this diversity offers opportunities for cooperation that can benefit all countries of the South. Opening new vistas for development based on geographical proximity, relevance of development experience and availability of complimentary natural and financial resources, management and technical skills. India's experience shows that development, if it has to succeed, has to be self-reliant, self-directed and people-centered. India has provided more than 2 billion US dollars worth of technical assistance to developing countries under ITEC and other programs. Science and technology has been at the core of India's development strategy. India has the third largest scientific and technical manpower in the world. From a nation dependent on food imports to feed its people, India is not only self-sufficient in food grain production, it has a substantial reserve. For developing economies with scarce capital, small scale enterprises are a boon because they require less capital input and the projects can be implemented in shorter timeframes. ITEC has been promoting the small scale industries idea through the National Small Industries Corporation and the Development Commissioner for Small Scale Industries. Training centres have come up in Mongolia, Mauritius, Trinidad and Tobago and Vietnam and there are ongoing projects in Senegal, Namibia, Guyana and Zimbabwe. India is the second largest producer of milk in the world and at the vanguard of this white revolution is the National Dairy Development Board, which has set up a mini dairy at Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan at a cost of 438,000 US dollars. The dairy has a capacity of producing 8,000 litres per day. The entire plant was manufactured in India, skid-mounted and airlifted to Kyrgyzstan and installed by Indian engineers in record time. Resources in terms of manpower skills and appropriate technologies gives India a cutting edge. Indeed, the ingenuity displayed by Indian scientists, engineers and technocrats to develop appropriate technologies can only be described as heroic or we can call it the poor man's industrial revolution. At a time when developing countries are facing increasing pressure from the IMF and the World Bank to downsize and restructure, combined with a steep decline in ODA flows and growing competition in the global market, the ITEC program will have to be further reinforced. ITEC symbolizes the South's common objective of peace, equity, justice and dignity for all.


Might they end up with Aronado? Unless they just think you can get them cheaper. But they're not going to get them cheaper. Why would they get them cheaper? I mean, they might get them for a few years. Right.  But then how much of him is Coors Field? And it's funny because they did a lot of reading on the Coors Field effect, trying to study what they can expect from DJ LaMeu. And a lot of experts down at Peter actually think that if you get away from Coors Field, you actually become a better all-around hitter. Like you might not have the same numbers at home, but you're going to have much better numbers on the road because you're not going to be, I mean, you'll be more adept at looking at breaking balls that actually break rather than kind of spin and hanging the zone. So a lot of people think that once you move away from Coors Field, there's going to be a drop offensively in the home numbers because you can't hit like you hit like in Coors Field. But your road numbers will go significantly up. It's got to mess you up playing there. Now, I will say this about Aaron Otto. You can't be a better defender than him.  Well, let's be honest on, Machado won the Platinum Glove when he played third. Aaron Otto was in the league. That means that they thought Machado was better. So listen, I've seen him a lot more. But by I, they've got to be close. Yeah, I know that was great. Not good, great. But are we to believe that they're going to, they'll break the bank on him? I mean, the Yankees have spent a lot of money. They are over the threshold. They've just spent it in ways that aren't as sexy as their fans want it to be. It's not on Harper. It's not on Machado. Instead, it's on Hap. Instead, it's on Britain. Instead, it's on DJ Lamey. And it's just not sexy, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's not going to win. Absolutely.


Welcome to the original gangsters podcast. I'm your host Scott Bernstein of a quick cater addition and some pretty shocking news out of a Sicilian media outlet in the aftermath of the Gambino bus last week and then all this Hubba Lou about digging for bodies up in the Hudson Valley related to the Gambino's and the Sicilian wing That according to a Sicilian newspaper a name from the past is is now apparently a name in the present Jackie the nose to Miko a long time fixture in the Gambino crime family first as a soldier then as a couple then as a boss Ran the family was a very close confidant to John Gotti and the Gotti wing of the family has been a liaison for years to the Sicilian wing of the family from the Gotti Gotti camp Was a guy that originally Frankie boy Callie was put into Was put into Jackie knows his crew Jackie knows like I said ran the family in the 2000s it seemed like he'd been he ran into a little bit of legal problems and in the late 2000s came out of prison I think in 2012. Yeah, I really heard much of him he's 86 years old but according to this new media report out of Sicily he traveled to Palermo back in the summer in August of 2023 and was seen meeting with a Sicilian Don by the name of Giovanni Battista battle mentee. He's not from the Chinese battle mentee is he's from another group the Touretta clan he's alleged to be the boss he's on the run right now from Italian authorities but there's reports that that battle mentee was meeting with Jackie to Miko in Palermo in August they were seen on a patio of a restaurant having a meal and a meeting. I'm still trying to figure out what this means. I had assumed Jackie like I said he's 86. I'd assume that he had long retired is a guy that is clearly in some type of emeritus status. I knew that he was you know close to the Sicilian guys even though he's he was born in Italy, but you know, what wasn't considered a part of the Sicilian faction of of the Gambino's was was very closely closely aligned with John Gotti. And it's not shocking and one sense it's shocking and another sense it's not I mean it's shocking in the sense that we haven't heard this guy's name in a while. So when you get when you get away from the initial kind of double take factor.  It would make sense if this is more than just Jackie was traveling on a summer vacation with his family and wanted to meet up with some people that he knew from the past they happen to be mob guys and it wasn't really official business or the other side of this is that he was sent there by Manino and Shifulu to discuss criminal affairs on their behalf with the mafia out there was another thing interesting to point out is Batista battle mentee has been spending most of his years over, let's say over the last decade or so in the United States. He's ruling the Tourette clan but spending most of his time in New York, which also might explain the connection to Demico, but they were seeing meeting. And it looks like Jackie, the nose. Jackie knows Demico is he might have accident stage left when I was entering stage left again in the current soap opera that is the Gambino Sicilian faction and what's going on with this bus from last week with with the 18th Avenue crew. Joe Lonnie Joe Brooklyn the capo of that Sicilian faction and a guy that was mentored by Lorenzo Manino and Frankie boy Cali. And now is facing both assault charges in in state court in New Jersey for a vicious assault on some restaurant owners and Tom's River and now is the headline defendant in this big Gambino. Um, racketeering case targeting the trash hauling industry the guard of the demolition industry and in the construction industry and labor racketeering related to that. Jackie Demico was not indicted in that case last week either was Lorenzo Manino or Italian Dom this right now is solely a Joe Brooklyn issue but I got the feeling that this the last The last chapters of this have not been written and who knows where Jackie the nose fits in but he is a guy that you know everybody likes he's somebody that gets, you know, is a politician, a guy that has been able to kind of seamlessly maneuver his way through multiple mafia groups both here and overseas is a guy that has a lot of connections and and other families besides the Gambino's a guy that has a lot of goodwill capital in in the underworld both here and overseas. So we'll see I will keep you updated on what's going on with Jackie knows but he's back in the media right now at least On the other side in Sicily was seen meeting with Don battle a mentee in Palermo in August of 2023 Jackie the nose welcome back for OG pod I'm Scott Bernstein