LGBTQ programming, outside-the-box outreach, and trauma sensitivity (American Libraries)

By Terra Dankowski, Nov 4, 2019, American Libraries

I had no agenda, no plan, but doing something made sense to me,” said Melinda Mathis, teen services librarian for Napa County (Calif.) Library (NCL), on approaching local nonprofit LGBTQ Connection to collaborate on a partnership with the library. Mathis, a presenter at “Adventures in LGBTQ Advocacy and Programming” at the Young Adult Library Services Association’s (YALSA) Symposium on November 2 in Memphis, Tennessee, had her hunch confirmed.

“One of the youth leaders [at LGBTQ Connection] asked, ‘Do you want to work with us on a dance?’ It seemed like a good fit, so we ran with it, and we were right,” she said.

Napa County, like many places in the US, needed more safe spaces for LGBTQ teens—spaces where they could just be themselves. And like many places in the US, the area has unique demographics that organizers needed to take into consideration: It’s a semirural area, there is wealth disparity between people who own the vineyards and those who work them, there is a large Latinx and Spanish-speaking population, and the politics are different from nearby San Francisco. “There’s a lot of 1950s tucked around the corner in Napa,” said Ian Stanley Posadas, program director at LGBTQ Connection.

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