Hilary Moon Murphy

Babies - The Perfect Outreach Accessory

December 18, 2000

I've been doing bilingual outreach for Minneapolis Public Library for over a year now. I tell people who have never seen a library about our services and what we have to offer.

One of our most challenging groups to reach has been the local Latino population. Many of them have good reasons to suspect the intentions of any government institution. Some are so busy working multiple jobs that they cannot make it to school parent meetings or resource fairs. And many have the perception (based on libraries in Mexico) that libraries charge money for their services.

Leo Montes, one of my bilingual team, told me that he was tired of going to events where the only people present were other social workers.

"Hilary, let's go where the people are. Let's go to the churches."

Duh. Why hadn't we thought of that before? The Archdiocese of Minneapolis gave us permission to proselytize to their congregations. So yesterday morning, Cassie and I visited a Catholic mass in Spanish with Leo.

It was an eye-opening experience for me. The last time I had been inside a Catholic Church, I had seen an almost empty mass serving a few elderly parishioners. But that mass had been in English.

There were over 400 people packed in to the little church we visited. Instead of organ music, the choir sang to drums and guitars. There were babies and toddlers everywhere - crawling under the pews, climbing on the pews, or being held in their parents arms. They made noise but no one seemed to care. The message that this service gave was clear: You are welcome.

Cassie loved it. She was not banished to the nursery (the way she is in my Meeting for Worship - Quakers don't tolerate noise as well) and she got to flirt with everyone. And I discovered once again what a great ice breaker a baby can be. By having her with me, I established an immediate bond with the other parents - even though my Spanish is admittedly atrocious.

Our outreach mission was an enormous success. The priest, knowing that we would be there, gave a talk on how parents should be involved with their children's education through churches, schools and libraries.

When he was done, everyone wanted a library card. We almost ran out of Spanish Language applications. It was a great day.

I'm finally uploading pictures from the web cam to the web. Here's a picture of Cassie and her Daddy. More to come.

Hmm