With the end of July in sight, I am beginning to transition into a new stage of life along many dimensions. I will move over 500 miles south to North Carolina to begin law school in August. I will also complete my fellowship placement at Local Matters. The upcoming change has certainly brought new stressors into my life along with new excitement. This week, I have largely begun preparing both physically and mentally for these changes. 

At Local Matters, my week followed the same routine I’ve discussed in my prior posts. I was feeling worried that I am running behind deadlines, and while I still have a lot of work to complete, I realized I have drafted over 20 pages of the manual. I developed some of the sections outlining processes and procedures for technology use this week. Within my first few weeks, I noticed that lack of access to documents and confusion over where to find information in digital folders frequently arose. This problem often stymied the efficiency of meetings. Thus, I attempted to draft a thorough section on how to best upload files to the cloud. I also created a mockup folder for the team that better organizes files. Next week, I will meet with team members working on the food access team to identify areas of improvement for the operations of their team.

A highlight of this week was the Wednesday Fellows Learning Session. Elizabeth Martinez, the CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters, and Dani Robbins, a seasoned veteran in the non-profit sector and Director of the Masters of Nonprofit Administration programs at John Carroll University, spoke to the fellows. I really enjoyed Director Robbins’ presentation in particular. As someone who is solutions-oriented and prioritizes outcomes, learning about program evaluation was extremely helpful. I plan on incorporating material from this lesson into my work by formulating an evaluation process for the operations of my host site once the operations manual is put into practice. I am excited to use this knowledge to hopefully improve my organization’s capacity to serve the community.