Last week, 3 IFLS-area librarians and I went to Sun Prairie for further training in the Wakanheza Project™. The Wakanheza Project™ is an initiative/concept started by the Ramsey County Public Health Department as a community-level primary prevention approach to addressing family violence, and it has many ideas that are useful in any situation.

Wakanheza is the Dakota word for child, and its English translation is “sacred being.” The Wakanheza Project™ includes principles and strategies that can positively effect the way we see and treat each other. If the culture of an organization can shift a little to incorporate and internalize some of these principles and strategies, there is enormous potential for benefits. These can include more peaceful circulation desk lines, better interactions between adults and teens, and less embarrassment for parents who are struggling to parent in public. Overall, we are striving to help create an even more welcoming environment for patrons, and an easier and more rewarding work environment for all staff.

The workshop we attended was designed to help us bring back the Wakanheza Project™ ideas to our own systems. We have lots of plans for how to do this, and you’ll be hearing more about it as time goes on. For one thing, look for a weekly blog post, either here or in Newsflashes, to help you think about some of these issues. For another, we’ll be offering some workshops, designed for the WHOLE library staff, coming in the fall, winter, and spring (of 2012).

To keep this post to a manageable size, I will wait and post about a principal tomorrow. In the meantime, I want to thank Becky Arenivar (Prescott), Alisha Green (Eau Claire) and Dawn Wacek–and their co-workers and managers who are allowing them to participate in this project. If you have questions about any this, please contact one of us!