The January 2025 newsletter of Let’s Move in Libraries includes:

• The release of a new report on food justice and public librarianship
• How to do new things in collaboration with your communities in 2025
• How to contribute your knowledge on SNAP-ed partnerships
• How to join our monthly Birds of a Feather online conversations

This month’s featured image comes from a new Safe Routes to Libraries planning project.

Libraries are more than buildings—they’re gateways to learning, opportunity, and connection. Yet, for too many, physical and transportation barriers make accessing these vital spaces difficult and even unsafe. Urban Libraries Council’s (ULC) Safe Routes to Libraries initiative addresses this challenge head-on, ensuring everyone has safe, equitable access to the transformative resources libraries provide.

From 2024-2026, ULC and its national partners are engaged in a research and planning project to explore the feasibility of a national initiative to eliminate barriers to library access. By adapting proven strategies from the Safe Routes to School and the Safe Routes to Parks programs, this initiative strives to help libraries collaborate with local partners to improve walkability, safety, and infrastructure, especially in underserved neighborhoods. The Safe Routes Partnership is thrilled to be working with the ULC on this initiative.

Let’s Move in Libraries is also contributing to this effort. We invite you to make 2025 the year of Safe Routes to Libraries! Learn more at this 2022 webinar on “From Bikes to Books: Exploring Partnerships Between Safe Routes to School and Public Libraries.”

We look forward engaging libraries from across North America around this topic.

At this point, we are looking for examples of Safe Routes to Libraries community partnerships. If you at your public library have worked with any other agencies or organizations to:

• Encourage – Using programs, events, and activities to promote walking, bicycling, public transportation
• Educate – Teach community members about the broad range of transportation choices, and make sure they have the skills and know-how to be safe from traffic and crime while walking, bicycling, or using public transportation
• Engineer – Making physical improvements to the streetscape and built environment that increase street safety for all (e.g. new crosswalk to your library)
• Equity – Ensure that Safe Routes benefit all demographic groups
• Evaluate – Assess the impacts of the above efforts

than we want to hear from you!

Fill out this very short form telling us how your library promotes or supports Safe Routes to Libraries. To be most useful, we need your input before February 1, 2025.

Funding Safe Routes to Libraries

We’re also thrilled to share that America Walks recently announced its Community Change Grant Applications. These grants are a fundamental part of the America Walks coalition and they are so excited to see what community grassroots projects will come out of the 2025 cycle! The deadline to apply is January 17th.

Learn more and get started on your application.

StoryWalk® with a Safe Routes Twist: A New Chapter in Community Safety

As part of this project, participants completed a Walk, Ride, and Roll to the Library Zine. Download a copy to use at your library.

Our friends at the Safe Routes Partnership recently published this blog post to kick off the Safe Routes to Libraries project.

“Inspired by a growing movement to improve safety and access to public libraries, the Safe Routes StoryWalk® takes the familiar StoryWalk® concept and adds a powerful twist: traffic safety education. By blending literacy, art, and public safety, the Safe Routes StoryWalk® encourages walking, biking, and rolling to the library while promoting safe road behaviors for all.

Over a year of collaborative planning, community engagement, and partnership-building culminated in the launch of two StoryWalk® installations at Benning Library in Ward 7 and Bellevue Library in Ward 8.

Each StoryWalk® installation features colorful, community-inspired artwork accompanied by traffic safety messages written in verse. The messages offer simple yet impactful lessons on safe walking, biking, rolling, driving, and taking transit. The whimsical nature of the displays makes them approachable for people of all ages, blending fun with education. Local artist Rebecca Crouch created artwork that reflects the local community and the various ways people travel to the library. Visitors to the StoryWalk® will be able to see themselves, their family, and their friends represented in each panel, while also receiving an important safety message. The Safe Routes StoryWalk® project is a model for how public spaces can be transformed to serve a larger purpose. It’s a reminder that safe access to libraries is essential to advancing equity within the Safe Routes movement.

By combining art, literacy, and traffic safety education, the Safe Routes StoryWalk® is doing more than encouraging safe access to libraries — it’s building a culture of safety for the entire community. As libraries continue to evolve to meet the needs of their communities, projects like the Safe Routes StoryWalk® ensure that everyone — no matter how they travel — can get there safely. This initiative is proof that with creativity, collaboration, and community input, we can reimagine public spaces as places of safety, learning, and joy.”

Read the full article on the Safe Routes StoryWalk.

View the final project and get inspired to bring this program to your community!

The release of a new report on food justice and public librarianship

In Louisiana, the Audubon Regional Library hosted a healthy-eating program each week at its Clinton and Jackson locations. During a program, SNAP-ED Nutrition Educator Sharnet Nixon talked with Zenaria Atkins (pictured) and other children at the Audubon Regional Library in Clinton. Photo by Peggy Stafford

A group of staff from multiple SNAP-Ed implementing agencies as well as Noah Lenstra, Associate Professor of Library and Information Science at University of North Carolina Greensboro and Director of Let’s Move in Libraries, have convened to develop a guide for partnerships between SNAP-Ed implementers and public libraries to help underserved populations access healthy food and opportunities for physical activity, make healthy food choices, and be more physically active.

The guide will include information about the value of SNAP-Ed and public library partnership and guidance for how to start to partner, collaboratively implement and sustain programs, build in equity, and more.

As we continue to move through drafting content and look ahead to plans for expert review, pilot testing, and evaluation, we would like to expand the team!

If you are interested in joining this effort, please email Sarah Mott, program manager at Michigan Fitness Foundation to be added to the contact list and save the date for a virtual meeting on Monday, January 27, 2025 from 1:00-2:00 pm EST to learn more about the project and how to get engaged

In the United States, SNAP-Ed is a federally funded, evidence-based program that helps people lead healthy, active lives through a combination of educational strategies, social marketing, and interventions to improve policies, systems, and environments (PSE). In many states (find yours here), SNAP-Ed works through the Cooperative Extension system, but in some states SNAP-Ed is implemented by non-profit organizations, social service and public health agencies, Universities, and more. If you or your library has worked with SNAP-Ed in any capacity, we want to hear about that!! Please reach out to us or email Dr. Noah Lenstra or Sarah Mott if you have questions or want to contribute to this project.

How to join our monthly Birds of a Feather online conversations