Description: 

In libraries, we talk to strangers—library users—on a regular basis, but when we move outside that environment, we generally hesitate to engage with people we don’t know; this limits our ability to build the coalitions we need to develop as advocates on behalf of libraries and the communities we serve. Let’s be honest: it’s uncomfortable, in most venues, to initiate conversations with people we don’t know. By overcoming this discomfort, we can learn about others, engage with others, and innovate with others. 

Bess G. de Farber’s CoLAB Workshops are proving to be important, transformative tools for any of us who are involved in advocacy and working with strangers. Her workshops and book, Collaborating With Strangers: Facilitating Workshops in Libraries, Classes, and Nonprofits, co-authored with April Hines and Barbara J. Hood, take an asset-based community-development approach (as compared to a need-based approach) to generate fun and comfortable opportunities for connecting with people we don’t know (or don’t know well).  

Please join us for this free, highly-interactive 90-minute online workshop, under the auspices of the California Library Association Ursula Meyer Library Advocacy Training project. It will include the origins of CoLAB Workshops and examples of how they developed over the past 23 years, particularly in libraries. 

Goal and Objectives:

By participating in this session, you will learn how to hone your ability to meet, interact with, and develop positive, mutually beneficial, collaborative relationships with people you are meeting for the first time.

By the end of the session, you will be able to:

Describe a simple facilitation method that connects people who don’t know each other or who have not yet worked together;

Cite at least three examples of how this system works to foster unforeseen partnerships and shared resources;

Describe the difference between asset-based and need-based community improvement; and,

Identify at least three steps you can incorporate into your own efforts to effectively work, interact with, and develop new collaborative relationships.

Presenter:

Bess G. de Farber serves as grantseeking and collaboration development consultant at ASK Associates, Inc. She has had four careers: as a musician and arts administrator; as a program officer managing grant awards for arts and cultural, social services, and human and race relations; as a nonprofit management consultant; and as an academic research development professional. She has provided collaborative grant-seeking training to thousands of library staff, nonprofit and academic professionals, artists, and university students in the past 32 years, and has led efforts to secure millions for nonprofits and academic libraries. Her CoLAB Workshops have served over 3,800 participants through 80 workshops hosted in libraries, classrooms, conferences, and nonprofit organizations for groups averaging 20. Bess is author of Creating Fundable Grant Proposals: Profiles of Innovative Partnerships and coauthor of Collaborating with Strangers: Facilitating Workshops in Libraries, Classes, and Nonprofits. She holds a Bachelor of Music from the University of Southern California, and a Master of Nonprofit Management from Florida Atlantic University.

About the Ursula Meyer Advocacy Fund Training Series

This program is part of an ongoing series of monthly online sessions organized offered through the Ursula Meyer Advocacy Fund Training Series; sessions are generally held online on the second Wednesday of each month, beginning at 10 am PT. The series honors the memory of Ursula Meyer, 1977-78 CLA President, California Library Hall of Fame inductee, longtime director of the Stockton-San Joaquin Public Library, and fierce advocate for library services and intellectual freedom. The Ursula Meyer Fund was established to provide for the training of librarians in all stages of their careers, and library supporters, in political advocacy and political action, in honor of Ursula’s belief that librarians need effective political skills to advocate for library support at all levels of government. Archived recordings of previous sessions are available on the California Library Association YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@californialibraryassociati2705/videos.

To support the series through a donation, please visit the CLA website at https://www.cla-net.org/donations/fund.asp?id=23440.