I can’t believe it’s week three of the fellowship. This week I attended the Ohio Partners for Cancer Control general member meeting at the American Cancer Society in Dublin, Ohio. The first part of the meeting was an overview of the 2013 Clinical and Community Linkage Conference: Psychosocial Distress Screening and Oncology Supportive Care Services. The meeting also covered the issue of having doctors report cancer diagnosis. Apparently, a great number of doctors aren’t aware they are actually supposed to report cancer diagnosis so statistics can be compelled from that information. They also reviewed the Ohio Academy of Family Physicians/American Cancer Society/Ohio Department of Health efforts to increase colorectal cancer screening. It’s interesting to attend all these meeting even though I’m not always sure what is going on during them.

After the meeting we went downtown to hand over the grant proposals to the Ohio Department of Health. Cancer Support Community Central Ohio wrote two separate grant proposals, but I only helped with the one my supervisor was writing. It was a relief for everyone that they were finished, but I almost didn’t want to part with it. I had nervous energy handing the proposal over to Ohio Department of Health employee, because you want to know right away if you were selected. We won’t find out until the beginning of August if either or both proposals will receive their funding.

This week I have contacted several community partners about expanding the west side programing. In a few weeks I’ll be meeting with several community members on putting together a workshop type program for teens since teens are often left out when it comes to cancer support programming.

We are moving to our new location on Old Henderson Road from the Powell location. If you think moving your apartment/house is a hassle it’s nothing compared to moving an entire nonprofit organization! This move has been back breaking work, but we have had a lot of volunteers help with the move. If we didn’t have so many volunteers and few interns then this move wouldn’t be possible. I took a few pictures of the moving process from the Powell location. The last picture is my office at the Powell location.

I think the most important lesson from this move is that working in a nonprofit you have to be a jack of all trades or as my supervisor says “Jane of all trades” which is very true. No matter what position or degree one may hold there will come times when you have to roll up your sleeves and do some hard work.