A Message from the Executive Director

August 13, 2020

Recently, CALS has been distributing thousands of meals every week to families who need help feeding their kids and teens. After COVID-19 triggered widespread job losses, the need for assistance skyrocketed for many families in our area who had never imagined they would be in such a position. CALS has now given out over 127,000 meals from our library branches in response to the pandemic.

Committed to personal service for our visitors

At a recent food distribution session at CALS McMath Library, our branch manager Laura Hodo called out a friendly hello to a library visitor, addressing the woman by her name. To Laura’s surprise, the woman began to weep.

She thanked Laura through her tears, saying, “I’m having a really hard time right now, and it’s important to hear someone say your name. Thank you for being here and knowing who I am.”

I often hear praise for the work CALS staff is doing. Someone stopped me on the sidewalk the other day to tell me how impressed he was with the library safety protocol at his branch. Last weekend, another patron emailed to say how grateful she was that someone at Fletcher had taken time to answer her questions and then steered her to a book she was enjoying. And we just received a very special thank-you note from a woman who had accidentally returned a book containing a bookmark that her young son had given her many years ago before he died. She was heartbroken to lose that bookmark, but the next time she checked out a book from her library, there was her family keepsake, tucked inside the book along with a note from a library employee at Thompson Library.

Our staff builds relationships with the people they serve in your neighborhood libraries. When I volunteered to hand out meals recently at our Dee Brown Library, I observed how our staff there knew most of the meal recipients by name.

Providing emergency food assistance (with the help of generous community volunteers) is just one of the ways we try to lift up the community. There are other crucial programs that we are currently supporting for the benefit of our schools and hospitals, for our children and families, and for everyone who calls Central Arkansas home.

CALS works to help Arkansas #CompletetheCount

Federal tax revenues that are returned back to Arkansas to pay for all sorts of important programs and infrastructure are allocated based on the once-a-decade U.S. Census. If we miss people who should be counted this year, this will negatively affect our state for years to come.

CALS has been working to help our community members complete the Census. Our Community Liaison to the Latinx community, Maria Aguilar, has gone out into churches, grocery stores, and other sites in our neighborhoods to assist Spanish-speaking people with completing the Census. We estimate that Maria’s efforts thus far have solicited enough new Census responses to bring in over $5 million to the people of Pulaski County over the next decade. She will keep working up until the September 30 deadline.

And Maria’s not alone. Several other staff members are hard at work setting up events and partnerships that will raise our census responses and help our state for years to come. We’ll be out there working with the City of Little Rock as well as our other partners to do our best for all of us in central Arkansas.

Register to vote, absentee or in person, at CALS branch libraries

Here’s another way that CALS is committed to helping people engage with their civic obligations. In November, we will have national and local elections. You can register to vote right now at any one of our library branches. Eight of our libraries will be early voting sites. We are working with the Election Commission and the County Clerk to educate people about the Governor’s order of August 7 facilitating absentee voting by mail, so they do not have to vote in person if they are worried about contracting the COVID-19 virus. Finally, the Pulaski County Election Commission has recently put out a call for poll workers. Working with the Arkansas Department of Health, the commission is providing protective wear for workers (PPE) and will limit the numbers of voters inside a polling location at any one time. If we can help with answering questions and guiding people to meet this call responsibly, CALS will be there, too.

In the meantime, we’re at our branches that are now all open 3 days a week, offering help with completing the census and registering to vote. If you’re not registered to vote or you haven’t filled out your Census response yet, please come stop by your local CALS library where we have safe social distancing, masks, and friendly staff members who can help you. Here’s a helpful guide to our new library hours, as well as what you should know before you visit.

Nate Coulter
CALS Executive Director