Orange County Library System partnered with the Graduate School of Business at Rollins College to serve the financial and investor education needs of lower-income and Spanish-speaking residents, especially wage earners in the region’s hospitality industry.
Key Activities:
- Worked with Rollins College to engage MBA students (under faculty supervision) to develop and deliver financial and investor education workshops for workers in the hospitality industry.
- Developed a partnership with the Central Florida Hotel and Lodging Association to help promote the workshops to member employers.
- Delivered workshops with Rollins College faculty and MBA students for the benefit of hospitality industry workers. The workshops, some of which were in Spanish, occurred at library branches and worksites (major hotels in Orlando), as well as on the web. The employer workshops were promoted by the hotels’ human resource departments.
- Distributed financial literacy materials highlighting the library’s personal finance and investing collections through hotel human resource departments.
- Authored a book chapter about the project and the collaboration with Rollins College in Partnerships and Collaborations in Public Library Communities: Resources and Solutions (IGI Global Publishers, 2012). The library’s chapter, “Partnering to Promote Financial Literacy,” was also featured in the Advances in Library Information Science Newsletter.
