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Language: en

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the national medal for Museum and
Library Services is the nation's highest

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honor for libraries and museums that are
serving their communities in exceptional

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ways Public Library of Cincinnati and
Hamilton County the Eva Jane Roma Kum

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director Kimber Fender and Community
member Amina Tuki traveled to Washington

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from Cincinnati Ohio to receive the
national medal and spoke to imls about

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how the life Library impacts the
community the public library Cincinnati

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Hamilton County is one of the largest
busiest and oldest public libraries in

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the country and our mission is
connecting people to the world of ideas

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and information and some of our goals
include a number of things but one of

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the critical ones that we've been
working on is really working with

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literacy and lifelong
learning we are very interested in

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making sure that the kids in our
community have the education that they

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need this was partly driven because we
learned last year that Cincinnati had

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the third highest rate of childhood
poverty in the country and so we needed

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to do things on two sides of that issue
one was to help the kids who are in

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poverty today get the basic Services
they need but the other is to make sure

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that they get out of poverty so that
this does not continue in future

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generations and we think education is
one of the keys to raising children out

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of poverty so that's why we've worked
very hard with kindergarten Readiness

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with the readon program to get kids
reading at grade level

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and to make sure that they stay in
school and graduate on time first when

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I'm started to come to library I come
for homework center with my

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daughter she do her homework there
because I

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can't we established homework central as
a new Department as part of our main

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library reorganization and it's intended
for any student who wants to come in

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after school and get some one-on-one
help we have staff working there but we

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also have volunteers they have a quiet
place and staff they're doing homework

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with it and when they need help like a
school they raise their hand and they

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come to help them she's 12 years old
she's in sixth grade she's a student

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excellent and I'm proud of her libraries
are really well known for being involved

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in lifelong learning because you can
come to us at any age or stage of your

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life life and um learn something either
through a self-guided learning by just

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checking out books coming to programs
that we offer so we really do plan to

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have programs and services that meet all
of those different needs at different

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ages and that can be quite challenging
but it's something we're really

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committed to originally I'm from
Ethiopia and I didn't have ucation that

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all even for my not
language and

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I can't even read my language but now I
come to the library for

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reading writing
speaking The Adult Learning Center is

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the homework central in the mornings
before the students get out of school um

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we realized that we had adults coming
into our main library into our tech

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center in particular who needed more
assistance than we could provide for

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them in that setting so we took the
staff from the uh homework central and

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have them working in the mornings in The
Adult Learning Center to help prepare

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students for their GED test to help them
with English with computer skills those

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kinds of one-on-one things that we
couldn't do for them in another

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setting every week two
hours one person sit with me to help me

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to read how to
read help me how to write how to spell

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how to speak
gramas that's what I get every week it

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really does get to that idea of lifelong
learning of realizing that not all

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learning takes place in a structured
classroom setting that this is a way for

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people to keep learning who need to
learn English so that they can do all

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the things that they need to do in our
society to be able to do their their

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grocery shopping help their children
with homework apply for jobs online all

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of those things that require that basic
knowledge of computers in English and we

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think it's something that's vital to our
our goals and missions being awarded

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this medal has just been a tremendous
experience for us um we've worked very

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hard to have an impact on our community
we feel very strongly that it's

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important for libraries to be involved
in the communities and I think it uh

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shows our community that we have their
interest at heart but I think it's also

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a reflection on the community support of
the Library part of this is that they

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come in and use our services very
heavily and without their support

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financially and in use we would never
have been able to offer the level of

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programs and services we currently

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provide