Whether you’re in the youth program, activities committee, or relief society, this is a wonderful activity to put on to help create more unity in your ward.
I was first introduced to the idea of a Human Library while scrolling through Facebook. The post read:
In Denmark, there are libraries where you can borrow a person instead of a book to listen to their life story for 30 minutes. The aim is to fight against prejudices. Each person has a title – “unemployed”, “refugee”, “bipolar”, etc. – but by listening to their story, you realize how much you shouldn’t “judge a book by its cover”. This innovative and brilliant project is active in more than 50 countries. It’s called “The Human Library”. (Michelle Solomon and Tonya Manuel)
This got me thinking… what if we applied this to the different people in our ward?
So let’s say you’re in the youth program and you want to do this as a weeknight activity. A few weeks before that night, you’d go around and ask relief society sisters and elders quorum brethren to volunteer their time that night to be “books”. Pass around a sign up sheet or talk to them individually to find out what topic they’d like to speak about. This could be anything from how their upbringing was to their mission, to their career or what it’s like being a mother, literally anything.
Then set up chairs all around the cultural hall, one for the “book” and one for the “borrower”.
I wouldn’t do the full thirty minutes but cut it in half or fourths at 15 minutes or 7 minutes. Then just let the youth roam around freely as they get to meet the adults in the ward and have some awesome conversations.
You could either create signs or have a general directory readily available for the youth to know which topic will be discussed by each ward member.
For easy, organized activity planning, download our free “Human Library” Activity Planning Guide here
