Elcy has graduated! She needs transportation!!!
HELP US HELP ELCY!
Elcy Timothy recently graduated from Iowa State University with a BA in Sociology and had to end an internship early when she no longer had the transportation necessary to get her there. Elcy has found a vehicle that she would like to purchase; having reliable transportation will help her obtain full-time work and fulfill family responsibilities. Our goal is to help Elcy pay for some--or all!--of this vehicle before the next school year starts in August.
WHY HELP US HELP ELCY?
Until recently, Elcy and I were colleagues: she was an intern at the library where I serve as a Librarian in the Youth Services department and where I helped mentor her on projects, including developing educational programming for our City's local Pridefest street festival. Honestly, selfishly, I was thrilled: when I was an undergrad studying Sociology, brown and black faces were scarce; when I later pursued a graduate degree in Library and Information Science, those faces were virtually nonexistent, accurately reflecting the lack of diversity in a field whose central goal is to serve communities that are often far less homogeneous than their library staff. It was a pleasure I'd been sorely lacking, many years after beginning in my own career, to have the opportunity to work with--and help guide--another Sociology and future Library Science student, a young woman of color who's dedication to public libraries lies in her belief that libraries have the power to lift up the most vulnerable, voiceless, and marginalized members of our communities.
Elcy has tirelessly helped with programs for Black community members, LGBTQIA+ community members, for kids, for adults, at odd hours, always helping in between her classes and coursework. Our relationship extends beyond the library and Pride, though; over the years, Elcy and I have traded stories of race and racism and marginalization and inequity, sometimes through the language humor that means "this is the only way I can cope right now" or "can you believe someone said that?!" and sometimes in the rawer language of frustration and pain, but always honestly and without hesitation. (We also talk about other stuff, FYI, because Elcy is hilarious and the nicest person in the world and also weird-in-the-best-way, and you can't NOT talk about anything and everything with her.)
Though I knew Elcy's internship would come to an end this summer, if I'm honest, I didn't want her to leave. What neither of us expected was that it would end so suddenly, because suddenly Elcy had graduated and her lease had ended and she had to move back into her childhood home, and she didn't have the transportation necessary to make the trip to a job a city away.
Like many people, Elcy also lost work--at the University--because of layoffs due to COVID-19, making it more difficult to save the money necessary to fund reliable transportation. To compound this, the loan she was relying on to purchase a car fell through: you can't get a loan to get your own transportation when you don't have full-time work, and finding full-time work is only made more challenging when you don't have transportation. We see this cycle all the time.
I demand a lot of myself, and I have demanded a lot of Elcy over the years, andshe has never failed me. Elcy has been working in public libraries since she was 16, but has also worked with Ames Pride, UNICEF, and other organizations, all with the goal of lifting up others--and now it's time for her community to lift up Elcy. She is fierce and powerful and destined to be a real leader in whatever she chooses to do in life; providing Elcy with the funds to purchase reliable transportation will open up opportunities for her that she may not have had otherwise, and my friend Ben and I would love if you could help us help get her there.
Elcy told me recently that she and her friends had a saying in high school: "Friends don't let friends go hungry." I couldn't think of a better way to sum her up.
- Tanvi & Ben
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