It’s been a very exciting week here at the Siemer institute. We have a new employee! Her role is the Director of Impact & Partnerships. It’s nice to hear a different voice during meetings and have a new perspective at the table. Although I will only be working with her for a short time, I’m looking forward to all of the insights she has to offer.

Looking back at the goals my supervisor and I set for my time here, I finally feel as if I am on track to complete them all. One of my goals is to create a database of Siemer Institute partners. This is so partners can find and contact each other and build more of a community. I thought this was an impossible task when it was first assigned, but after becoming comfortable with using Zoho, it did not take me long to create a program that did just this. Even my supervisor was impressed with how close I had come to her vision. 

As for my best practices report, I am nearly complete with my draft. We are approaching our last few interviews and I want to start working on creating infographics based on what we’ve learned. A theme I have found from my interviews with Siemer Institute partners is the idea of meeting families where they are. Our partners believe that the families they serve are extremely resilient and resourceful. Many of these families have the motivation and desire to be in a better place in life but do not know how to get there. Our partners see their role as guiding the families towards success. Because of this, we see programs that offer childcare and scholarships for parents who want to go back to school, we see programs offering financial literacy classes at 11:00 p.m. so that night shift service workers can attend during their lunch breaks, and programs that were having trouble locating mental health services creating their own.  It is very inspiring to see the excitement our partners have over their work and the innovation they show when faced with challenges.