Staff reports
DAYLO was recently awarded an honorable mention for the South Carolina Library Association’s 2024 Intellectual Freedom Award. Presented at the SCLA’s statewide conference in Columbia, the Intellectual Freedom Award recognizes those in the library services and advocacy community who have contributed to an awareness of intellectual freedom and censorship issues in South Carolina libraries — on the local, state, or national level.
Founded in 2021, DAYLO, or Diversity Awareness Youth Literacy Organization, is a student-led book club and community literacy service group fostering empathy and understanding through the power of story, with a growing number of chapters across South Carolina, including five chapters in Beaufort County.
According to a release from DAYLO, “The student leaders and advisors of DAYLO, and their mentors Claire Bennett and Jonathan Haupt, are honored to be commended by the SCLA with this honorable mention — and all the more so in a year in which the Intellectual Freedom Award was presented to past S.C. Association of School Librarians (SCASL) president Tamara Cox.”
Earlier this year, DAYLO was also recognized with a national commendation from the American Association of School Librarians at the recommendation of the SCASL and presented by Tamara Cox at the statewide SCASL conference. The South Carolina Education Association (SCEA) also awarded DAYLO their Richard W. Riley Award for Human & Civil Rights at their statewide awards dinner.
DAYLO was first established at Beaufort High in 2021 by Holland Perryman, then a high school junior, inspired by literary and social justice community programs she experienced as an intern of the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center.
During the 2022-2023 school year, six DAYLO students from Beaufort High, Beaufort Academy, and Battery Creek High spoke out in public comments at Beaufort County School Board meetings in response to challenges against 97 books in district school libraries. Earlier this year, five DAYLO students from Beaufort High, Beaufort Academy, USC Beaufort, and Charleston’s Academic Magnet High School also spoke publicly against statewide restrictions impacting the freedom to read, as documented in a nationally broadcast segment for Nick News. The inspiring advocacy of DAYLO students has led to additional opportunities regionally and nationally, and has empowered the creation of new DAYLO chapters across South Carolina.
To learn more about DAYLO’s pro-literacy community service outreach and continued advocacy for the right to read freely, please follow DAYLO on Instagram at www.instagram.com/daylo_reads or Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/DAYLO.reads.
