WebJunction Diversity Fair Scholarship Winner Announced

By Aída Bardales -- Críticas, 5/1/2007

Sara Peté—adult services librarian at Olympia Timberland Library—has won WebJunction’s Spanish Language Outreach (SLO) Program’s Diversity Fair Scholarship. She will attend the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in Washington, DC, from June 21–27. WebJunction will cover all conference fees and additional expenses.

Peté serves as a library liaison and volunteer for the Bookends Literacy Network, which matches volunteer tutors with ESL students in the local community. The program provides Spanish-speaking communities with free ESL classes. Peté’s library partners with Bookends by providing space for classes, class materials, marketing materials and media promotion, and enrollment assistance.

WebJunction’s scholarship selection committee—which included Queen Library’s Loida García-Febo; Juan Lee of the Utah State Library; multicultural outreach specialist Yolanda Cuesta of Cuesta MultiCultural Consulting, and Críticas editor Aída Bardales—chose Peté based on the impact of her outreach work, the community’s need for such a program, and the collaboration Olympia Timberland undertook with a community organization serving Spanish speakers, such as Bookends.

WebJunction hopes to improve the number of submissions it gets for the scholarship after a relatively small turnout this year. “Next year we plan to alert trainers and participants about the Diversity Fair Scholarship during their workshops,” said Laura Staley, WebJunction’s Spanish Language Outreach Program coordinator. WebJunction plans to have two scholarships for 2008—one for workshop participants and another for trainers.

On June 23, Peté will present her successful ESL Tutoring project for Spanish speakers at the Diversity Fair. She will also be invited to the Follow-up Session for SLO workship participants on June 24 and the WebJunction Members Reception.