Hello everybody! It is week 3 at Tewahedo Social Services, and planning for the Youth Summit is in full swing. I have been applying for in-kind donations left and right, trying to secure water, food, and other supplies for the day. I met with our Volunteer Coordinator Tilahun Tesfaye to finalize our volunteer roles and upload them to our signup platform, Bloomerang. I also found several grants that I think ETSS would be a strong candidate for, so my supervisor Sarah Huffman and I will meet next week to pull together our applications. I am excited to get a window into grant applications in the nonprofit world. 

ETSS’s Summer Youth Enrichment Program (SYEP) began this week, so the entire Youth Services department staff has been quite busy managing our 11 sites and putting out metaphorical fires. On Monday, we distributed school and cleaning supplies to all the sites. 

Friday was a whirlwind. I helped supervise a field trip to the Olentangy Caverns, using my somewhat rusty Spanish to translate for a group of third graders and their teacher. In the evening, I ran the face painting station at our annual World Refugee Day event at the YMCA. It was amazing to see how ETSS used the celebratory day, full of music, dances, food, and kids’ activities, to promote local resources to refugee families and distribute essential donations.

The Youth Summit will be similarly jam-packed with resources for our SYEP families. I created a flyer advertising free family entertainment like concerts at the Columbus Commons, the Wexner Center for the Arts, Kanopy streaming service through the Columbus Metropolitan Library, and Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. I am also working on sending the kids home with goodie bags full of books, school supplies, sports equipment, and other resources they might not normally have access to. 

Until next week,

Sanay