WebJunction

A group of 11 attendees met on March 30th in Hartford at the State Library's Van Block facility.

The group shared a lot of discussion; we talked a lot about CT's Puerto Rican population, which is proportionally high (5.7% of the CT-wide Latino population are Puerto Rican) compared with the rest of America.  Hartford is 40% Hispanic, the majority of those being Puerto Rican.

Our trainer, Kellie O'Donnell-Bobadilla from the Hartford Public Library, was responsive to all the attendees, and two guest speakers proved fantastic.

Calixto Torres is a Hartford city Councilman  and also serves as Executive Director of the Connecticut Puerto Rican Forum, a multi-service not-for-profit organization.

Torres provided lots of facts and statistics, noting that functional illiteracy is the most critical factor for the Puerto Rican/Hispanic population in the Capitol area. Torres noted that job skills, job-readiness, resumes, ESL software, citizenship classes, programs on computer literacy are all important to his constituents.

Torres also noted the prejudices that Puerto Ricans -- default American citizens -- face regarding their accents, and also that Park Street in Hartford is known as the Puerto Rican hub of Southern New England.

We also heard from Carmen Rodriguez of the Connecticut chapter of ASPIRA, , a national organization that's been around since 1961. Carmen shared a very personal anecdote about growing up in the English-speaking world as a non-native speaker.

All in all, this was wonderful training!  I think Connecticut's libraries are going to be able to use the knowledge to perform outreach in an efficient, respectful manner.

 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.