Public Employee Press



Profile in Public Service
Help from the heart



A young woman stands on the steps of the Friendship Baptist Church in Long Island City, holding her infant closely. Louise Stamp, an active member of the church, finds the mother and child and welcomes them inside. Stamp didn't know who this person was, and never learned her name before she left, but she knew this mother needed help and she knew she was on earth to give help.

Chance or fate brought Stamp and the woman together again, after a fellow church member met the young mom the next day at a local shelter for formerly incarcerated women and told her how to get in touch.

Her deep compassion made Stamp eager to help not only this woman but the many like her with similar needs and problems at the Hour Children shelter, which helps the women rejoin the community and hold their families together. Stamp has begun donating clothes, toiletries, and children's items for the shelter and convinces friends and family to pitch in with even more items.

"I don't have a lot, but what you have is what you share," said Stamp, a member of New York Public Library Guild Local 1930 who recently received the Carolyn J. Holmes Humanitarian Award from the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists. "Her work is an inspiration to many others," said Local President Valentin Colon.

In addition to her regular charity work, Stamp frequently helps down-on-their-luck people she meets on the street, whether what they need is a meal or a bus ticket. "When my spirit tells me to give, I give," Stamp said.

A lesson from her mom

She learned this lesson at a young age, watching her mother cook huge pots of soup to feed hungry folks on street corners in their neighborhood. "Back then, I didn't understand why she did that, but I do now," Stamp said.

Through her job, Stamp does even more to help the disenfranchised and marginalized of society. Two-and-a-half days a week, she works at the NYPL's "standing library" in the Riker's Island prison. "I'm not there to judge what people did," she said, "My job is to help them by providing the resources we have at the New York Public Library."

Stamp says she was overwhelmed by winning the CBTU humanitarian award. "I don't do these things for recognition," she said. "The work I do, I do from my heart."

— Joseph Lopez