A passionate, small-town librarian is getting a big-city honor for helping show how even a part-time library can help immigrants learn English.
Karla Shafer, director of the Hooper Public Library, is getting an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C., next month to tell a national gathering of librarians how even a “one-girl show” in a town of 827 can make a difference.
She was awarded a second $5,000 grant to continue a literacy program she began two years ago to help Hispanic immigrants.
And her program helped persuade backers to extend funding for the national grant program, offered through the American Library Association and the Dollar General Foundation.
The Hooper library is the smallest in the nation to receive the grants. It’s open 23 hours a week, and Shafer, 58, is the only regular employee.
Immigrants
**We are all immigrants. (Quote from librarian in article)
I love how the debate is framed that people are anti-immigrant. Maybe they are anti illegal immigrant.
It is also BS that this is turned into a race thing. If we were talking about a white anglo-saxon Canadian that was an illegal immigrant I would want them booted out just as much as any other illegal immigrant. It is not the color of your skin or the language that you speak that is an issue it is the fact that you are here illegally.