We are thrilled to announce that the Penguin Random House Foundation has awarded Windsor Public Library a grant through its inaugural Library Awards for Innovation search. This award recognizes the most innovative public libraries and library staff for community-based library programs that engage citizens in reading and strengthen the social and cultural fabric of their community. This year only, Canada was eligible to compete, and Windsor Public Library was the only Canadian library to be named a recipient. You can read more about the award and the winners here.

The program for which our library was granted this award is Ms. Janet’s Library Live! Teen Mentor Program.  Ms. Janet’s “army of volunteers” is a regular fixture at Central library, helping younger children in programs, while at the same time gaining valuable social and employment skills. Teen mentors who have gone through the program are now in medical school, are studying to be engineers, are traveling across the world, and are successfully navigating their way through life. And they give high praise and due credit to Ms. Janet’s program.

As one woman (now studying neuroscience) who passed through the program writes, “I owe so much of my success to Ms. Janet and all that she has done for me as a mentor. I can’t speak of her highly enough – I am so grateful and indebted to her. Her work has made an incredible difference in my life, not to mention all of the other teens who have volunteered for her or the youth that have participated in the program.”

To learn more about volunteering at the library, check out our Volunteer page.

Congratulations and thank you to Ms. Janet Brown for allowing Windsor Public Library to nominate your program for such a cool award.