Local youth write about library and community

Leading to the opening of the Bayview Branch Library, slated for early in 2013, students with deep connections to the Bayview Hunters Point area wrote essays responding to the question: "How can the new Bayview Branch Library help to build a stronger Bayview community?"

Bayview leaders Derek Toliver, Theodore Ellington, Cynthia Scott and Dr. Betty McGee judged the essays, full versions of which are online now.

Mary Abler, Friends of the SF Public Library, told Footprints that they received "many excellent submissions all echoing the same sentiment-that the Bayview community loves its Branch Library."

Here's a sampling of wisdom from local youth:

 

"The new Bayview Library will help different cultures coexist. There are so many cultures in the Bayview community; the library could become a place for cultures to learn about each other, as well as a place for students to do their homework with their families and read new and interesting books...The new library will allow for children and their families to visit anywhere in the world, through a book." - Nathan F., Fifth Grade

"I believe having a new library will help build a stronger community because having a new and improved library will encourage more people to go to the library, it will help students improve their grades and futures, and it will have more resources and programs to help more people. The community around 3rd street and Revere will be stronger if a new library is build. It will provide a safe place of learning for me, my family, and neighbors. For these reasons, I conclude that a new library be build so that more people can have the positive experience that I had with a friendly librarian that helped me do my homework and start to do better in school, and therefore have a better future."- Isaiah T., Seventh Grade

"The new library being built will allow the community to recognize that we are begin given [free access to] resources, now all we have to do is go and use them... the Bayview Branch Library would allow the community to become stronger [and will] provide technology available to people who don't have access to it. The new Bayview Branch library will also allow students, like myself, to come to a safe environment and study, as well as acquire material to help me in my academics... I view myself as a positive role model in my community and my behavior and actions motivate younger individuals who look up to me as a role model. By being this motivational force with people of the younger generation seeing me studying in the library, it will motivate them to study and educate themselves as well." -Timothy B., College