Gregorio Travoli spends his nights lying in a tent in downtown Dallas and most of his days at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library on Young Street.
Travoli said he has visited the library for the past 15 to 20 years. He isn’t the only homeless person to call this branch his own; many of its patrons are homeless. And the library’s staff has started to welcome them in a new way.
Coffee and Conversations, a one-hour session that caters to homeless people, is the brainchild of Jo Giudice, who became the director of the Dallas Public Library system last year. Giudice’s office is at the central branch.
“This type of program has been a dream of mine since I moved from branch manager to the central library years ago,” Giudice said. “As director, to see it in action just gives me goose bumps.”
Two sessions have been held since early last month, and the next is set for Dec. 19. Attendance has doubled to more than 70.
At the most recent meeting two weeks ago, staff member Jasmine Africawala welcomed the group.
“We want to open up minds and communicate among us all, especially because we all enjoy this building throughout each week,” she said. “We know you have other options to go to, and yet you choose the library.”
The visitors sat with staff members at long tables lined up end to end to discuss the afternoon’s topic: what the library meant to them.
“This is the loudest this library has ever been,” Africawala told the participants.
More than a half hour later, guests filled out a survey designed to gauge their interest in the library. Travoli admitted that some homeless people attend the sessions because of the chance to receive something for free. A recent meeting offered coffee and cookies. But, he said, a lot of visitors know that good changes are occurring, and that the sessions are worth attending.
Val Armstrong, a library staffer who partnered with Africawala to get the program off the ground, said a lot of big-city libraries view homelessness as a problem to confront. He says their library takes a different approach.
“We’re looking for ways we can better serve them and looking at them as peers,” he said.
Rashad Dickerson, 26, has been visiting the Dallas library for a long time, he said.
“I’ve been experiencing homelessness. So, I started to come to a place where I knew knowledge was,” he said. “The staff and the homeless individuals may not realize they have a lot in common, but there’s really a lot of similarities: humility, fine arts, knowledge. There’s a lot.”
Africawala said it’s easy to stereotype.
“I think it’s easy to lump individuals into a general group, and it is easy for people to decide what a group’s like because of one experience with one person,” she said. “We cannot write them off as crazy, not write them off as less of a person. As a public library, we almost have an obligation to promote equality.”
Giudice agrees.
“This has absolutely been one of my dreams,” she said to the group at a recent meeting. “We really want to hear what you have to say, we want to help you if you help us. This is your library, and it is about free and open access to all.”
When Giudice started at the central branch, it was her first experience with an urban public library. She quickly learned who came and who avoided the stacks inside.
“My first few visits to Central were simply very much how our customers come to Central. They’re a little overwhelmed with our customers and the homeless presence,” she said. “It became apparent to me that we weren’t doing anything to engage or assist. We weren’t doing anything; we were just putting up with it.”
The library has a code of conduct for visitors. The rules on this “lengthy document,” as Giudice calls it, were posted everywhere, but no one read them. People, many of them homeless, were commonly seen eating, sleeping and being disruptive, Giudice said.
She decided to highlight the five biggest rules being broken by putting them on large posters around the library. Visitors started obeying them, and staff started enforcing them. There were more steps to take.
“We visited The Bridge. We talked to our partners at The Stewpot,” Giudice said. “What we learned was if you start communicating and engaging, then you’re not going to have the problems that you had in the past.”
They introduced the “Wal-Mart method,” having library staff greet customers all of them as they enter.
“By making eye contact, it makes them human, because so many people don’t even look at them, and then they act out,” she said.
In September, the library started working with CitySquare to bring AmeriCorps representatives Antoinett Carey-Spriggs and D.J. Edwards to the library 20 hours each week.
“I’ve gotten pretty cool and comfortable with the AmeriCorps people,” Travoli said. “They understand where we’re coming from.”
The next step is to develop targeted programs for the homeless customers.
“They’re going to be with us, but if we can give them something to do while they’re here, they’re not just staring at the wall and falling asleep,” Giudice said.
Armstrong said it’s important to get conversation flowing between the staff and this community of patrons. Slowly, it’s happening. And Travoli hopes it happens more.
“It’s important to better understand each other so there’s not confrontation between any person and staff member. Instead of causing a big scene and going to security, they [the staff] can understand to just communicate with the person. Jo is actually more understanding of this than anyone here on staff,” he said. “This is something that can be accomplished.”
from: Dallas News
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