Tanvi Rastogi, the Teen Library Director at the Ames Public Library, delivered messages of empowerment and encouragement to a crowd of community members, faculty and students 1:00 p.m., Friday afternoon, at the newly renamed Margaret Sloss Center for Women and Gender Equity.

Formerly known as the Sloss Women’s Center, the Center for Women and Gender Equity hosted their first featured guest of the new year. Rastogi told the audience how libraries can support social change and spark that same ideal in their readers.

At an early age, Rastogi had little to no experience in a library. “I didn’t go to the library because I didn’t feel I belonged. I didn’t see books with characters that looked like me.”

Rastogi is a first generation American citizen. As a child, she was raised by a single-parent mother who immigrated with Rastogi’s father from India, who later passed away. While her mother did everything she could to provide for her children, she was also caring for the other immigrants around New Jersey.

“My mother was always feeding, caring for, and sometimes housing other immigrants from our community. She was a very quiet activist,” said Rastogi.

Rastogi earned her bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Rutgers University, but quickly learned that the library was where she wanted to be.

“I found that all of the things I enjoyed about Sociology were implemented at the library,” said Rastogi.

She then went back to school and obtained her Masters from the School of Communication also at Rutgers University.

Rastogi went on to work in the Youth Services Department at the Hunterdon County Library in New Jersey. In 2012, she found her way to Ames as the teen librarian for the Ames Public Library.

“In the world of libraries, you will never hear one term more than ‘neutrality’. However, I believe that libraries can’t be neutral. If libraries are to function properly, we have to acknowledge that we are not equal,” said Rastogi.

In every aspect of her work, Rastogi has worked to implement ideas of inclusion and equity. She has worked to add more reading selections featuring LGBTQIA+ individuals, books that showcase people of color and books that highlight Muslim’s as well as other minorities. Not only has she included more diverse books, she has implemented several programs that help underrepresented kids.

“For a child, seeing yourself represented in media is liberating. Not only do they need books that represent them, they need programs that represent them,” said Rastogi.

One of the programs Rastogi has worked to implement is called Ramadan story time, which features a story time hosted by a hijabi woman during Ramadan. The goal is to teach kids about another culture, or see someone that looks like them being celebrated.

“After Ramadan story time, if they go out in the world and the meet someone at the grocery wearing a hijab, they understand it and they have the words to describe it. This is how we create community,” said Rastogi.

“Moving forward,” Rastogi said, “We need to training on implicit bias, mental health, and homelessness. We need to identify under-served communities. All of this is so that we can create a community that helps people, especially kids, live authentically, be empowered, have and use their voices, and ultimately thrive.”