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“Library of Love” opens its fifth location at Dorothy Kirby Center

May 23, 2014
YNOT at the opening ceremony of its fifth "Library of Love" at Dorothy Kirby Center on Thursday. (The Korea Times/Park Sang-hyuk)

YNOT at the opening ceremony of its fifth “Library of Love” at Dorothy Kirby Center on Thursday. (The Korea Times/Park Sang-hyuk)

A new library opened on Thursday to benefit the youth at Dorothy Kirby Center, a juvenile probation facility in Commerce, as a part of a Korean nonprofit organization’s “Library of Love” project.

YNOT Foundation, which is affiliated with the Youngnak Presbyterian Church of Los Angeles, held an opening ceremony to celebrate the opening of the “Library of Love,” its fifth in a series of libraries around the Los Angeles area.

The center, a juvenile hall for incarcerated youths, will be starting with 500 hundred books.

Center officials said the library will be furnished with a book discussion area and with computers for Internet searches.

The foundation started the “Library of Love” project in 2007 with libraries in Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall, Camp Scott and Camp Scudder.

Youngnak Rev. Kim Gyeong-jin, YNOT CEO Tom Cho, Kirby Center Director Mike Varela and 20 others were present for the event.

Varela thanked the Korean community for providing the library and a running center for the youth at the facility. He said he hopes the library will encourage them to dream and think about the future.

“It’s significant that a Korean church can show leadership to the L.A. community. We plan to fulfill the needs of the community through YNOT,” Kim said. “Instead of placing importance on the opening of the library, we want to monitor how helpful they actually are to the youth.”

YNOT said it would continue its ties with juvenile halls through mentoring programs.