 Next up, on our lightning round sessions, we are going to learn about prom dress giveaway from the Groton Free Public Library in Vermont. Their population served is a thousand. So Jody, I'll just hand it over to you to introduce yourself and tell us all about what you did at your library. Great. Thank you so much. So good afternoon, everyone. I hope you're enjoying the conference. I know that I am surely enjoying it myself. Before I begin on prom dresses, please know you're only going to hear my voice in this presentation and see a title page that we know by the webcam or PowerPoint. We have super spotty internet in general, and it's very windy here today. So my type person has suggested I sit as still as possible and make this presentation to you. Okay. So before I begin, I wanted to tell you a little bit about our library here. We are set in the northern-ish corner of the little state of Vermont. Our town has just over a thousand residents. We are home to one little store, a post office. We have a few local contractors, and we have our amazing little library. We're pretty isolated by most people's terms, and most of our population here lives below the National Park. Our library is actually housed right in a development of housing for people with lower incomes. So we're pretty fortunate in that we get to serve some pretty amazing people with lots of needs. So I'm Jody, and I'm the librarian here in Grottin. I'm a librarian by chance and also a new resident to the town of Grottin, but I'm a real big supporter of all things that help grow my small community. I'm contracted to work just 22 hours here, but typically my job takes me from the early morning hours well into the night, and storming ideas to help support people that are my patrons, but also my neighbors. And so once upon a time, all of my friends were getting married. My closet was packed with bridesmaid dresses of all colors and shapes and styles, some with them all shuddered or shorter and a little spunkier. And as much as I really loved what each of those dresses meant to me, I really felt like they were taking up space in my closet and that the dresses deserved to be worn again. And so really that was how the prom dress giveaway came to be. So the girls, I felt like who wouldn't otherwise be able to attend prom because the dress didn't fit into their budget or the resources to actually go and get a dress weren't available. I just, I thought why not give the dresses a second chance. So I hopped on the phone with other girls who might have been in the same weddings with or who I knew had been in other weddings. And I told them that I was really eager to collect all these dresses that were sitting in our closets and get them away to girls in need. And lo and behold, everyone was absolutely thrilled with the idea. Not only because the dresses were going to be worn again, but they were just taking up so much space in all of our closets. I began to contact schools and let them know I'd have dresses available. I hung flyers and made Facebook posts. I asked friends and families to spread the word. And to my surprise, but I guess really not, not really. Within a few weeks I had about 50 dresses to give away. At the time I lived in New Hampshire and I wasn't a librarian yet. So I would use this a bit of information as kind of a gateway to say that this this project really can happen just about anywhere. I set up in local gyms and thrift stores and I drove my displays around to some local schools to ensure that I was reaching the most amount of girls possible. I approached thrift store owners, I approached gyms and local stores and asked them what they could do to help make the project most successful. I felt like I was not only filling in need in the community, but it was also a logical way to get the dresses redistributed into our community. In some aspects I feel like kind of felt like it was a glamorous recycling project. The relationships with the thrift stores I soon realized were extremely important. Not only were they a gateway to how to get more dresses to keep me well stocked, but they were also a great avenue for reaching girls to come and get dresses. They helped me gather girls who weren't afraid to wear something that had once been worn before and was used. Their thrift stores also work as a great place for free hangers, free dress bags, and extra plastic totes, which now that I'm at the library are super important for storage at the end of the project. Also, one of the challenges of this project that something that I'm working hard on is getting over a stigma about wearing something that's not new. In some instances I've spoken to girls who have come to get dresses that just simply won't wear something that someone else has. And in many cases what this does is it puts them in kind of a predicament that gives them two options. Either they're going to wear a dress that's been worn, or they're not going to go to the prom altogether. And being that we live in a very small community, many girls fear that the dress that they're going to wear to the prom everyone will know about because there's a stigma about who wore it last year and what that girl represents. And they don't want to be in the same dress as that girl last year. So one of the suggestions that I offer is that you really need to get dresses from far and wide and not just in your local community. I contact my dad in an entire different state and friends in entire other states and ask them about if they have dresses and find ways to meet all up. And so the question of dresses from far and wide is super important. Using social media seems very, very important. Getting the word out there and once the word is out there that you're collecting dresses and that you have an amazing program, I promise dresses will just very easily start flowing in. Starting early on this program, which is where I am at this point here in the library, means contacting your schools, find out when the proms are going to happen, make a calendar of the different dates, and try to promote the different proms during those different times. So here in our town where we have a union school and so I really work hard to do their prom, but there are some towns a little further away from us and I do find out when their proms are and I do find girls do come from all over the place to get dresses. When there's truly a need, I feel like people will come to get them. Our program also asks that or has the idea that there are no qualifications to get a dress. So all dresses are free without any questions. Let's see. When people know that there's an outlet for getting rid of the dresses in many cases, they'll jump on coming to your library to drop them off. But watch what you wish for because my town is so super small. I often find myself even in the evenings driving around doorstep to doorstep picking up dresses that people no longer want if they would like to get to our program. I also have the problem that the dresses take up a lot of space and so again, watching what you wish for, if you get too many, that becomes a problem too. Some of the stuff in the library can be challenging. In the case of our library, it's super small and I felt like this may be totally impossible. With so many dresses that are big and bulky, it really is hard to find space. But when I looked around and considered a few of the pieces that I found super important about the project, I considered that we'd actually use our upstairs bathroom which doesn't get much use. It really made sense here because it was somewhat private. It wasn't in the middle of the stacks and people would easily be able to access it. Even without letting me know why they were at the library and that was for privacy reasons and just to help kind of demote that stigma about getting these use dresses. I bought some racks. I had racks given to me from a local first store and in my move, those racks didn't make the move with me. So I bought racks. I got a few long mirrors and the problem just gave away really began here and gotten. Not only did we have enough dresses to fill the racks, but I was able to hang them going up our stairwell and the atmosphere seemed perfect. It was private, inviting and dazzling with all of the beautiful dresses that we had. When I thought to myself kind of as a second guess about using that bathroom, I also reminded myself that I had done the same project in the corners of dusty first stores and sweaty gyms. Our corner of the library would be a perfect place. I have to get questions about the conditions of dresses. I've never rejected a dress because of its condition. I did the dresses the way just as they are without a budget for this. There wasn't money for dry cleaning, senior repairing. Sometimes small alterations do need to happen. So I contact people in the area that are local seamstresses and I have the list available for the with contact information for those seamstresses. In my time doing this project, there's not one time that a girl has not approached a seamstress, told them why and how they got the dress and that the seamstress did not give them their service for free. So that's pretty empowering. My strength also is that I get a lot of really small dresses and mid-sized dresses, but not as many plus-sized dresses. So I spread the word pretty hard that I'm really in need of dresses of all sizes. I wanted to share that I'm the first year I did this. I was contacted by a local girl who was facing her family, was facing some challenging times and she needed a plus-sized dress and at that time we really just didn't have anything in the collection that would fit her and I could feel her pain as she left with nothing. But it was really kind of game on for me. I was absolutely determined to find a dress. So I reached back out to those who had donated and asked them to reach out to their people who really looked far and wide and I was able to contact the girl after I had gotten a bulk number of plus-sized dresses and she came back and she was able to find a dress and some folks who didn't have dresses offered money and with the money I was able to get to her family and they in turn bought shoes and jewelry to go with the dress and so she she left with tears of joy that that second time around and that was a pretty empowering experience. Bringing dresses to a library has been amazing and it's challenging but it's tons of fun. The biggest challenge for this program at a library really is the space. Gallons take up a ton of space. Gallons need lots of room in order to be hung and seen and there's a lot of beauty and there also needs to be a good plan for storage but really don't let those things deer you from trying to make this program work in your community. There's always a corner in every library that could use a little bling and in most cases this place really don't have to be out for terribly long. I allow ours to be out for about a month to a month and a half really just to get you know reach as many people as possible but it really depends on you know when your problems are if you're only going to focus on one or if there's others in the area. I also suggest really using what you have we do some streamers in our school colors that's the buck that's up there in the corner for blue and gold. Use some loneers get some glittery fabric scraps and just really asking people if there's enough little decoration or something that you think would make it a little better ask people because it's really not a commitment for very long if you were to borrow something. As a librarian I feel like this project is another way that libraries are bridging gaps in our community. Our role in our library swells well beyond the stacks. There's a feeling of openness, safety and community library and I feel like those who access this program they're confident about coming to the library to get a dress. There's no need for girls to have to make the choice to not attend a prom due to the lack of resources. Every girl deserves a dress and a chance to dance across the dance floor feeling beautiful and loved. If you're ready to take on such a project I'm completely open to answering questions through emailer on here today but there are also many organizations who have local chapters doing something very similar to what we have here in Groton. Find one that supports missions and make it a reality in your community or like me take it and head on and start collecting the dresses. One dress at a time, one person at a time making a big difference and that's our home dress giveaway here in Groton. Absolutely, that's very, sounds like a great program. We did have just one comment that came in that I'm going to read that I'm going to discuss here. Depending on your community and your state and local laws there are sometimes issues with things that are officially donated to the public library that becomes potentially city owned property depending on how the city is set up so in certain states, I mean this has been done in other states she mentions in Indiana is a huge giveaway at a library that's very successful in yours is. So just make sure to double check with your municipality to see what the rules are and how things can be donated whether they can then be given to people or do they need to be circulated and checked out in that kind of way instead. That's a great format, thank you. Alright, so thank you so much Jodi.