This is the fifteenth edition of JTPL Stories: a series of interviews with library patrons, staff, and partners. Continue below to meet the faces of JTPL with our Outreach Coordinator, Aliya! Click Here to read the entire series.
Although Hilda Kendrick-Appiah, our library’s current board president, has traveled from Argentina to Thailand and around the world with her advocacy work, she always comes back to Jeffersonville.
She’s never thought about living anywhere else. “It’s home,” she says. “I love the people and I love my neighborhood. I like just being involved with the community.“
As we spoke this month, Hilda shared several stories of her travels abroad lobbying for public education with the global teacher’s union. She’s hiked the Great Wall of China and spoken with a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Ressa, from the Philippines.
But out of all her stories, Hilda was most excited to tell me about one of her former students from Utica Elementary. He still keeps an encouraging note she wrote on his report card back in kindergarten. In it, Hilda predicted that he would get into an Ivy League school if he worked hard.
The student recently graduated from Harvard Medical School.
Hilda has traveled all over the world with Education International to places like Thailand pictured here!
In 2014, Hilda was named Hoosier Teacher of the Year. Now, she spends much of her time volunteering at her church, working with local food banks, and helping immigrants. Her work on the library board is just one of countless ways she stays involved.
“I just like helping people because, you know, it’s just really been bad lately,” she told me. “It’s a terrible society we live in right now, so I’ve become more involved.”
In an interview with the National Education Association, where she served as the director for Indiana, Hilda joked, “I think I learned about activism when I was still in the womb.”
“I remember my dad one time… there was a young lady stuck on the road and he got out in the middle of nowhere and helped her. And my mother also did stuff like that. They were inspiring,” she told me. It’s because of them that she became an activist.
Not only is Hilda a board member at JTPL, she’s also one of our most regular patrons and has been coming to the library for more than 50 years.
She loves to read, of course, and she loves the impact that libraries have on our community.
“The library is just welcoming,” Hilda told me. “They welcome everyone. They welcome all these people from other countries… and it’s a place where people can feel safe.”
Hilda’s goals as our board’s president are to expand the library’s diversity and our ability to point people to the resources that they need. She believes that the library is a crucial part of her work across Jeffersonville.
She also encourages young people to get involved with the library board as a great way to begin serving our community. Hilda herself first joined the board in 1981 while she was working as a bank teller.
But no matter how people choose to get involved, she encourages all of us to give back to our home and build community in whatever ways we can.
If you’d like to meet the JTPL board or get involved with their work at the library, our board meetings are open to the public! All board dates can be found on our online calendar.
Very impressive and inspirational article about Hilda. I know her niece and twin nephews are very proud of her. Hilda is a beautiful person inside and out.