The Santa Clara Central Park Library has created the Teen Library Leaders Organization in hopes to connect to teenage audiences. In September 2024, the library began the new program and appointed five teens to keep the Santa Clara community informed.
Teen librarian Karen Guzman is in charge of the program and explained that the teen leaders assist in creating a connection with their respective communities.
“They help to spread the word about library programs and events at their schools and communicate with teachers and counselors on behalf of the library. They give the library insight as to what’s going on in the schools,” Guzman said. “They all have to be Santa Clara City community members, so they either have to live in Santa Clara, or go to a school in the Santa Clara Unified School District. They all have experience with volunteering at the library already, they also work on a team project and it just has to be a library related project.”
Senior Andrea Zyrene Palisoc described that her position as one of the five leaders in the organization differs from regular volunteers. Attending meetings and having necessary discussions takes up her time at the library.
“If you’re a volunteer, sometimes you help out, organize books, clean out their teen areas and youth areas,” Palisoc said. “If you’re part of the teen library leaders, if you’re going to the meetings, you’re going through agendas of what’s going on at the library, any future events and any insight.”
Palisoc explained her involvement with the organization started with a simple goal she had, but it turned into an opportunity to be one of the first teen library leaders. This opportunity would grant her more community service hours and a chance to play an important role in the library.
“In junior year, me and my friend wanted to do a lot of community service because we wanted to do the Presidential Award for having 100 plus hours within a year. During AP Lang, our teacher sent out an announcement to Google Classroom that there’s community service for the library,” Palisoc said. “Me and my friend decided to sign up for that, and then we volunteered during the summer. I accumulated around 51 hours, and through that, my supervisor during the summer ended up emailing us about the teen library leaders opportunity.”
Since being a teen library leader requires experience, senior Niyati Patel recommends volunteering in the library. She explained the library provides multiple opportunities to not only receive community service hours but also gain familiarity to become a teen library leader in the future.
“I’d say that if you did want to be more involved with the team library leaders, you probably have to have experience with the library, whether it’s working with the Homework Helpers or just doing summer volunteer hours,” Patel said. “Once you have enough familiarity, then I think you will be able to apply for the position.”
The Teen Library Leaders Organization tries to focus on active issues that are going on in the community. Currently, they have picked up the topic of mental health. Patel vocalized trying to keep all SCUSD members informed and aware.
“We figure out a recent problem that we see happening in our community, and right now, we’re trying to face mental health awareness and trying to promote that,” Patel said. “We’re trying to think of ways that we can contribute to the community by giving back to them, by making people and students and staff more aware of mental health.”
Guzman expressed the motivation to start this organization was in hopes to bring the youth together, involving teens in leadership roles where their voices matter.
“We started this program based off of just wanting to be able to reach the teen audience a little more and try to gain more insight into how the library could better serve the teen community,” Guzman said.