Elizabeth Miniatt, D. R. Moon Memorial Library
Hello from Northern Wisconsin! My name is Elizabeth Miniatt and I am the director at the D.R. Moon Memorial Library, a small public library in Stanley, WI. We received a generous grant through the WiLS Ideas to Action fund in autumn of last year. Our project has the purpose of bringing curriculum and other educational resources to the rural Amish and Old Order Mennonite parochial and homeschools in our area. As these rural populations are rarely able to reach the library, we wanted to deliver resources and bring the library to them. We already have a program that has been going on for a few years now where we deliver library books to rural Amish and Old Order Mennonite schools. We wanted to expand that program to offer additional educational resources besides books.
Through one Outreach Librarian, we surveyed the parents and teachers of these rural schools to gain an understanding about what they wanted from the program. We then held meetings with our library team to determine what to distribute, gathered the necessary resources and curriculum, and delivered them in packets to each location every month. Our project has changed from when we first started in response to the requests and needs of participants as we go along. As these requests are discussed and implemented, we have added Spanish and German language materials, increased focus on grammar and writing materials, and added puzzles and word searches to our packets. We started with just a few locations that wanted the curriculum packets, but that number of participants has continued to grow as teachers and parents like the program and tell other rural schools and homeschools about it. We are so excited to see the program grow and are grateful for the support from WiLS and the participation of our rural community!