My time at CND these past two weeks has been spent helping the staff prepare for Summer Day Camp to start on the 24th. I have been assigned the task of making sure all of the binders for the counselors are made before their arrival for training next Monday. It may not be the most exciting task to be assigned to but it is imperative that it is done before next week.

I have spent many hours printing, hole-punching, stapling, and organizing and I do it because I know that if I don’t, another staff member will have to take the time out of their day to do it, which brings down the productivity of the office as a whole. In the past, CND would have the counselors spend a whole day making their own binders. This was problematic for a number of reasons: counselors lose a day of training or lesson-planning when it is dedicated to organizing binders; the copier gets jammed often due to the high volume of papers being printed at the same time; and staff have to spend hours over the weekend before camp making sure that the binders have been organized correctly.

I wanted to work at CND this summer because I wanted to work with kids. So far this summer, I haven’t seen any kids and that’s okay. I know that the work I am doing now will be important in 10 days when 250 kids show up for camp. This experience so far has reinforced many concepts I have studied in school, including how important it is to make sure your organization is working as efficiently and effectively as possible to fulfill the mission and theory of change.

With that being said, I am very excited to meet all of the kids this summer. I will get to travel around to all of the different camps throughout the city to help with data collecting. I have also been assigned as an adult floater in CND’s camps, meaning I am there to fill the gaps when the counselors need it. I have been getting to know all of the staff and I already feel like a vital part of the team/family. I’m ecstatic to get this summer started but I am not ready to watch it fly by!