System’s innovation earns honor

For incubating a group of teenagers’ quest to better understand coastal Louisiana and its current events, the Terrebonne Parish Library system was honored with the Public Library Association’s Upstart Innovation Award.

Attached to the national honor is $2,000, money TPL Director Mary Cosper LeBoeuf said would be used to aid growth of the program for which the system was recognized, Future Leaders of America’s Gulf.

Fifteen students found FLAG in 2010 amid the ongoing response to the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, which spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico for months before the damaged well was capped, threatening to upend the Gulf Coast’s economy and taint its land.

Members investigate issues of community importance through research and interviews with public officials, then share their findings with the public twice a month on the local broadcast station HTV10.

“Public libraries are all about the community and being a place where the community can come together and share ideas,” LeBoeuf said. “(FLAG) fits right in with our mission statement. It’s something the community can use, it’s something that’s getting teenagers involved.”

FLAG was created outside of the library system, but TPL has since provided direction and resources while allowing the group to make its decisions independently.

Members approached a librarian at Terrebonne’s main branch in hopes of attaining a meeting room to establish a central location and better appeal to students from all of Terrebonne’s high schools. TPL Community Librarian Jen Hamilton raised the stakes, offering to incorporate the group as an official library program.

“They were worried (about the oil spill). They decided they could not wait until the adults figured everything out,” said Hamilton, the group’s advisor. “I realized pretty quickly that what they were doing was exactly what we do at the library. They were working with information. They were collecting information and sharing it with people.”

FLAG, which now investigates matters of economic, environmental and community importance while focusing on the development of leadership skills, has expanded its membership to include 26 members from seven public and private schools in Terrebonne and Lafourche.

Once filled with only high-school juniors and seniors, members now range from eighth through 12th grade. In total, 56 teenage members have gone through FLAG’s ranks.

As the group evolves, it will continue examining issues important to the Gulf Coast.

“Really, FLAG is about responding to the most urgent community needs, investigating those issues and sharing the information with the community,” Hamilton said. “If other issues arise, the focus might shift.”

FLAG’s latest endeavor is to produce video shorts of a staged hidden-camera focusing on the act and consequences of littering. Based of the infidelity-geared television series “Cheaters,” the creation is dubbed “Trashers.”

“I hope (viewers) become more aware,” said Tyler Legnon, a two-year member of FLAG who frequently makes television appearances on behalf of the group. “Not many people think (about the consequences of littering). … Even those small gum wrappers wind up in birds’ throats. It’s a cause of death to a lot of animals that are important to our ecosystem.”

Tyler, a sophomore at H.L. Bourgeois, said he plans to pursue a career in occupational therapy by way of Nicholls State University. He said he’d prefer to build his life in south Louisiana so that he can stay involved with the community he’s come to understand more deeply.

Among the skills Tyler has learned is how to communicate with public officials. He encouraged other high-schoolers to join FLAG, which he said is much more intriguing than it seems.

“We’re a conservation-based group, but it goes beyond that,” Tyler said. “We don’t just sit there and plant trees all day. We actually discuss things that are important to the parish.”

As teenagers have taken note of what their community leaders are doing, awareness has been reciprocal.

“I really like the way Jen has organized this group to be truly a group of teenagers that can explore the issues that face our community and then in turn get that information out (to the public) without any demands on the kids,” said Brenda Leroux Babin, an ancillary FLAG advisor with a doctorate in oceanography and coastal sciences and a Terrebonne School Board member. “She is fantastic at developing leaders.”

Hamilton praised Babin, librarian Cheri Andrepont, BTNEP Education Coordinator Alma Jackson and HTV owner Martin Folse as others who have proven important to FLAG’s success.

Accolades are not foreign to the group, recipient of the Louisiana Wildlife Federation’s Conservation Achievement Award and the President’s Environmental Youth Award in 2010 and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Gulf Guardian Award in 2011.

Awarded annually since 1997, PLA’s Upstart Innovation Award has been given to libraries in New York, California, Canada and Idaho, among libraries in other states. LeBoeuf will formally receive the award this summer at the American Library Association’s annual conference in Las Vegas, she said.