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Peter's Journey......

The LSSI Scholarship helped me achieve my goal of becoming a librarian in the city I love and in which I reside in - Oakland, CA. After graduating from San Jose State in 2004, I was promoted to Teen Services Librarian with Oakland Public Library and after working at the Main Library's Teen Zone for a couple of years, I transferred to the César E. Chávez Branch Library. There I was able to assist the large Spanish-speaking community not only in their language but also by offering a weekly basic Computer Skills class in Spanish. Today, I am still happily working at Chavez Branch, now as the Branch Manager and Adult Services Librarian. It has been my mission to give back to the community by offering various programs in Spanish such as Computer Tutoring, Tax Help, Gardening workshops, ESL Conversation classes, Spanish Book Club, and Latino Heritage Month events to name just a few. And of course this is with the collaboration of an awesome mostly bilingual staff! We are now adding some programming in Mayan since we are increasingly serving immigrants from Guatemala.