Week 1: CityYear Columbus, Development, and Service

Hello everyone, my name is Irma Zamora (she/her/hers). I am this year’s The Columbus Foundation Fellow at CityYear Columbus, working with the Development team. I am originally from Santa Ana, California but have also lived in Western Massachusetts. Now I am a graduate student at The Ohio State University in the Department of English and call Columbus home.

This week entailed a lot of onboarding processes with CityYear: reading manuals, familiarizing myself with websites and social media accounts, meeting my team, and understanding the Mission and Vision of the organization. Though most of my meetings were virtual, I truly got a sense of community from my team (the “Mighty Devo Team”) and have already sensed the support I’ll receive this summer. Given my conversations with the team, my role this summer will center around social media and within the fundraising arm of the organization. However, there will also be time for me to lead a project of my own–something I am still working on but excited to develop with my supervisor, Ruth Lomax.

Along with the general administrative processes of the organization, this week I also got to experience a CityYear community event. On Tuesday, I was part of their community clean-up event near Linden-McKinley High School with the AmeriCorps members. This was my first in-person event for the position and it was exciting to witness first-hand how CityYear executes one of their values: “Service to a cause greater than self”.

Though all of CityYear’s Value Statements seem significant and relevant for me, experiencing this particular value in action really stood out this week. Given our conversations in our Learning Session this week about advocacy, the relationship between “service”, “self” and “cause” resonated with my own understanding of social justice, and the intertwined relationship that exists between it and the nonprofit sector.

I’m excited to start this Fellowship at CityYear and for all the growth to come!