BC’s very own librarian, Ariel Dyer, has been selected to receive the Toastmasters’ Communication Achievement Award by District 33 Toastmasters for her “achievement in the field of communication.”

“I was surprised!” Dyer stated after being asked how she felt about being selected for the award. “I didn’t know about it. I didn’t even know it existed!”

Dyer has worked with the Toastmasters before when she was a Library Associate for the Kern County library.

“It’s funny because I met Debbie Allmon. We were standing in line for coffee at a coffee shop,” Dyer said. Deborah Allmon is the District 33 Director for Toastmasters and Dyer had been wanting to collaborate with them as a part of the Kern County library. The library and the Toastmasters ended up putting on community events together.

She added, “The moral of the story is eavesdrop when you are in line at coffee shops.”

Now she is receiving an award from them for all the work she has done with the Kern County library, the Shafter Library, overseeing the East Bakersfield Collaborative, and working with students here at BC.

Toastmasters International is a “nonprofit educational organization” with the goal of teaching communication and leadership skills. They give the Toastmasters’ Communication Achievement Award to non-Toastmasters member who they feel is a “distinguished individual in the

fields of communication or leadership,” according to their organization.

At BC she hopes to continue working here for many years to come and would like to focus more on media literacy events, specifically a Halloween-themed event in October focused on the misinformation surrounding the movie “The Blair Witch Project,” and she would like to bring in a library coffee cart as well.

With her work with the Shafter Library, she has worked to expand the library’s access to books and hopes to continue to expand aspects of the library as she views libraries as important to the wellbeing of the community.

“I call them a ‘community watering hole because you’re meeting everyone. There’re no barriers up,” she said. She hopes to continue her work within the public library system as well as the BC library.

Ariel Dyer received the award on April 29 at the Toastmasters District 33 Annual Conference in Fresno.