“League of Female Library Leaders”: Building a Professional Community

Imagine having 100 women librarians from different regions of Ukraine around you for an entire year. You can meet one another, exchange experience, look for solutions to challenges in your libraries together, find partners for new projects — while also gaining opportunities to develop your own library.

This is exactly how we envisioned the Library Leaders League — a year-long programme for women librarians who want to grow professionally, act with greater confidence, and create new opportunities for their libraries and communities.

What will participants gain?

Throughout the year, there will be meetings, learning opportunities, and conversations with colleagues. Participants will be able to join facilitated networking and thematic meetings, work with experts and mentors, share their own experience and initiatives, receive feedback, and discover new approaches to their work.

For those who want to take a more active role in the League, there will be a separate participation format. 15 participants will form its active core and receive individual mentoring from women leaders in business and the civic sector. During the mentoring sessions, they will be able to discuss their professional challenges, gain an outside perspective, and identify next steps for their ideas and initiatives.

At the end of the programme, we will hold the Librarian Leader of the Year competition in three categories. It will provide an opportunity to recognise librarians who are driving change in their libraries and communities. The winners will receive cash awards to support their professional development.

And there will also be some nice gifts for participants and their libraries.

But all these things — books, meetings, mentoring, awards — are only part of why we are creating the League.

Why do we need a community?

In library work, it is especially important to know that you are not alone. There may be a colleague somewhere who has already solved a similar problem, someone who is ready to share their experience, support an idea, or point you towards the right contact.

Because the most valuable things often begin not during a lecture or training module, but afterwards — in a conversation with colleagues, in looking for a solution together, exchanging contacts, or encouraging someone to pursue an idea.

In the League, we want to create an environment where participants can:

— find colleagues facing similar challenges and exchange experience and solutions;
— get support with work-related issues;
— discover new approaches to familiar problems;
— develop and implement initiatives together;
— find partners for future projects;
— gradually take on more responsibility and become leaders not only in their own libraries, but also within the wider professional community.

After all, a strong community is more than a lot of people in the same chat. It is people who trust one another, interact, help each other, and create things together.

That is why reciprocity will be an important principle of the League: not only benefiting from what the programme offers, but also sharing your own knowledge, helping colleagues, suggesting solutions, organising meetings, or starting joint projects. This is how an active core of people willing to take responsibility and develop the League together can gradually emerge.

How will it work?

Most of the programme will take place online. Distance, workload, or being unable to travel to Kyiv regularly should not become barriers to participation.

At the same time, the most active participants will have the opportunity to join in-person meetings in Kyiv — a chance to meet face-to-face, work together, discuss professional issues, and become more involved in the development of the League.

So if you cannot travel to Kyiv often, that should not keep you on the sidelines. Take part online and stay connected with colleagues wherever you live.

What comes next?

We want the League to continue beyond the end of the year-long programme.

During this time, librarians will have an opportunity to move from their first introduction to deeper involvement in the community. Those who are ready to contribute more to the shared work can become part of the active core — initiating change, supporting colleagues, mentoring others, and taking responsibility for particular areas of the League’s development.

That is why the Library Leaders League is more than a training programme.

It is a space where you can gain new resources for your library, build professional connections, exchange experience, and gradually create a network of colleagues you can stay connected with long after the project ends.

The Library Leaders League project will be implemented with the support of the Mnozhyna Foundation. We were among the 33 organisations selected for support through the Foundation’s first open call, which received 820 applications. Thanks to this support, we will bring together librarians from different regions of Ukraine for professional development, knowledge sharing, and joint initiatives.