Columbus Foundation Fellowship Programs

Week 5?! Holy smokes, times is flying by! This week has been just as eventful as any other with maybe a pinch more of anxiety. We are officially wrapping up all that is after-school programming, including the newsletter, which I created and am completely in love with.  With that done, we’re gearing up for our 6th annual Youth Summit and everything was running smooth until guess what? Ding, ding, you got it: something went wrong. This summer we are hoping to host the Summit at Ohio Dominican, as we did last year. It was a great fit because the campus allowed us to bring our own food, which is a must. The diversity of our youth and staff is far beyond boxed lunches and University catering (despite how hard they try to follow a recipe). This event is a celebration of the youth and their identity through music, art, dance and most importantly food. Food is such an essential part of every cultural and I can’t stress that enough.

Well this is where the problem occurred. The new events coordinator for ODU emails us Wednesday, explaining the campus policy does not allow outside food. *Heavy eye roll* I understand the woman is doing her job and is brand-new but I’ve already put heavy emphasis on the importance of food at this event. Anywho, we’ve been in contact with others at the University and fingers crossed we receive good news soon! By the way, all of this is happening Brittany ‘s (Youth Program Manager) last week before she leaves for San Francisco, to leave to Cambodia for 2 years! Needless to say, I’ve been a little worried about planning this without her, but she’s left me a ton of resources, including everyone in the office :). I’ve even searched out a park we can end the celebration in and eat lunch if worse comes to worse. The biggest lesson I’ve taken away from working these past 5 week is, absolutely nothing goes according to plan. But that fact is really the only thing you can bet on. Learning how to roll with the punches and improvise is a necessity when working for non-profits, and it’s half the fun!

As we all know good comes with bad, so the bad news with the food situation at ODU, resulted in good news from a food situation with me! This week’s lunch was Ethiopian! Peep the picture below from Lalibela. It was delicious and filled me up for the rest of day. I also cannot forget, before we went to Lalibela, I was able to visit the East site! There I was able to meet with older youth, volunteers or interns the site coordinator recommended for the Youth Board. This Summit’s theme is “Youth Voices Matter” so what better way to show this than creating a Youth Board at every site? This week and most of next I will be traveling to the sites meeting the different Youth Boards and explaining their responsibilities and getting their input for this year’s Summit. I truly believe these youth are going to be my greatest resource when it comes to planning an event everyone will love. I’m uber (no not the app) excited to meet all of them and begin working! August 5th is right around the corner and I can feel it sneaking up! 

“Weeks fly by at LifeCare” is a statement I hear often around the office, and it is so true. After reflecting on all that I have accomplished this week, it’s easy to see why the weeks go by so fast at LifeCare Alliance. Because LifeCare serves 15,000 clients, this leaves everyone in the office without an idle moment, including myself. Each week has surely been eventful at LifeCare, but I found this week to be more momentous, more pivotal, and more distinct for a number of reasons.

Week five consisted of greeting a volunteer group, attending a volunteer fair, attending an elder abuse training, assisting with a food tasting at an adult daycare, helping with the fan distribution, covering a meal route, covering an animeal route, completing the July Carrie’s Café newsletter, preparing a welcome guide for Carrie’s, doing research for Carrie’s, attending a retirement party, and even celebrating a co-worker competing in the Olympic trials. Whew! Because LifeCare offers so many services, I have been able to be involved in a wide array of activities, especially this past week. This has allowed me to network and engage with a numerous amount of people. While all of the activities I completed were important, the most significant were relationships I’ve made and the people I’ve talked with.

Monday morning, I had the opportunity to greet a volunteer group who would be working in the kitchen and in the pantry. I was eager to welcome them and get them excited for their day at LifeCare. While I figured I would greet them and move on with the rest of the day, I found them to have a lasting impact on my week. As I greeted the volunteer group, I found myself engaging with the volunteers who took time out of their busy work schedules to come and serve in the kitchen and in the pantry. I was able to see how passionate they were about LifeCare’s mission. Before they even began their work for the day, the coordinator was planning their next day to come back in the fall. While I thought I would be the one welcoming them and showing them what LifeCare is all about, they began to show me.

I attended a food tasting at an adult daycare on Wednesday, where we were able to give information and promote the services that LifeCare offers. In addition, we brought a meal in which the seniors were able to taste. While we were there I was able to chat with a lady who was wheelchair bound. I heard about her family, her previous work experience, and her insight on life. I feel as if sometimes we get so caught up in the business of everyday life that we forget to stop and take time to just converse and engage with others. I left the tasting on Wednesday with yet another reminder as to why LifeCare does what they do. Yes we were there to offer information and a meal, however, we were also there to provide a smiling face, a listening ear, and someone to talk to — proving again that LifeCare is way more than just a meal.

Friday afternoon, LifeCare held a party for Cathy Phillips, who retired from LifeCare Alliance as the Director of the Columbus Cancer Clinic. She served with the Columbus Cancer Clinic for 32 years, and has had a lasting impact on the program, the staff at LifeCare, and more importantly on the clients that the clinic serves. I was inspired as I saw the staff at LifeCare gather to honor Cathy, as well as hear words of how she has touched them both in their professional and personal lives.  Her passion, enthusiasm, and eagerness to help those who are possibly experiencing the hardest time in their lives, was visible from the first day I met Cathy a few weeks ago. Imagining all those lives in which Cathy made a difference is inspiring in and of itself. Working at LifeCare, it is easy to be encouraged and motivated to do the best work you can because you are surrounded by such dedicated groups of individuals. Cathy is a living example of how engagement with all people can not only create meaning in your own life, but give meaning to others lives as well.

A classroom may teach you how a non-profit is run, about accountability and financial management, but the greatest impact on me this summer so far is not only applying what I’ve learned from the classroom, but the relationships I have built, those I work with, and the clients LifeCare serves.

Click here to see the Carrie’s Cafe newsletter. Check out the fun events coming up in July, and stop by for a delicious lunch! We are open to the public!

Below is a photo of some of the fans that we received this past week. While it may look like a lot, this is only about half of the amount of fans that we usually give away at one distribution! After working a fan distribution, I have been able to see just how thankful and happy the people are to receive a fan, and how essential they are to people’s health.

Some of the LifeCare family ready for the Fourth of July. I hope everyone has a fun and safe holiday weekend! Until next week!

Every single day, I pass this quote. There are inspirational quotes painted on many of the walls at the Center but where my office is located, this is the only one I see every morning and evening when I come and go.

I’m not sure why or how but I never actually noticed it until Monday of this week. I’ve been reading it at least twice a day since this realization but couldn’t fully comprehend what Mr. Thoreau meant and how I could relate this to my life. So I did what seems like every person does when they have a question (or at least myself). I googled it.

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.” -Henry David Thoreau

This fellowship is an island of opportunities. Each day in this ten weeks is a wave and as much as I am launching myself to work harder, be more efficient and think more creatively and strategically, I am finding that those around me are doing a generous amount of the launching for me. While yes, I am given so much freedom that pushing myself is necessary, circumstances continue to come up where I am inspired, motivated and given a peek at the inside world of working at a mental health facility.

It can be easy to forget that I work at a place where individuals with mental illnesses come. I am rather tucked away from clients and my engagement with them and their loved ones have only ever been a smile or a hello as I walk by. While I am making cheery and hope-filled materials, people just one room over from me are suffering to an extent that I cannot comprehend.

I hear heart-breaking stories (always following HIPAA regulations) and hate feeling like there is nothing I can do about it. There are many times where I assume that my qualifications or inexperience in this field are hindering me. The statistics continue to come to life and I wish I could take more steps to slow their progression and reverse them.

As cheesy as it sounds (because I am fully aware that it does), I will now continue to remind myself that this is my island. The Center staff is well-equipped to take their action and I will take mine. Both are necessary. My individual opportunities cannot be ignored because eternity lies within each moment!

This week I’ve been reflecting a lot on my relationship with Columbus, and how it has evolved since I found myself moving here in 2009. I told myself I would only stay in Columbus for a year to complete my AmeriCorps service. Job opportunities, new friends, and realizing how much this city has to offer led me to stay. As some of the other fellows mentioned, Doug Kridler spoke with us this week about the opportunities Columbus has been given recently and his vision of how Columbus will continue to evolve. It’s incredibly exciting to be living in a city where there is so much change and opportunity. Grad school has been keeping me busy, and this week has reminded me there is still a lot in the city I have yet to take advantage of and explore.

Still high off of the Columbus warm and fuzzies, I took the teens at Southpoint this weekend to a quintessential Columbus event: ComFest. None of the teens had ever been, and I talked to beforehand about the Statement of Principles that guide the event, and how this year the organizers strived to include more hip-hop in the line-up. I wish I could say that they loved it and were inspired by the energy there but, well…it was hot. Very hot, and very, very crowded. It was interesting to get the teen’s perspective on ComFest and Columbus more generally. They don’t feel a particular affinity for Columbus, and expressed that they want to leave when they can. Talking to them made me think about how we develop our self-identity in relationship to the city we live in depends on many different factors, including our culture and upbringing.

Thinking about all the changes Columbus will be going through has me thinking about how I will change and grow in the next decade. Having this fellowship experience, and finishing grad school will certainly influence that change!

I’m breaking down week four’s blog post into three categories: culture, redecorating and education. You probably already guessed that by the title. Anyways, let’s get to it!

1. Culture: In reference to company culture, not exactly the larger society. I was asked to describe the company culture while submitting a member spotlight sheet to The Columbus Chamber of Commerce yesterday. Even though I’ve only been at The Center for a few weeks, I didn’t even hesitate. What an incredible feeling! In addition to witnessing the respect people have for each other on days of busyness and chaos during the life-saving, the Center is continuously expanding and changing which adds a whole new layer of busyness and chaos. I have been receiving quite a few emails about Directors going through interview processes, new hires, promotions and a retirement. The way each staff member addresses each other and the new folks who are joining the team is so awesome. Yes, awesome because that’s the word I feel describes everyone’s drive, encouragement and patience each day. I almost feel like I need to lower my culture expectation standards once I leave because the bar is high!

2. Redecorating: I returned from a staff meeting on Tuesday to find out that my office was practically gone…in a surprisingly undeserving way. Undeserving because I was given a new desk, bookshelf, table and two chairs. Their reasoning was that my previous furniture was old and wimpy. I am still trying to get over the fact that I have my own extremely spacious office. They treat me too well! With three days at this new desk, I’ve been working on many exciting things like pitching a story idea about a mindful workout program to the media (hopefully I’ll be able to share the outcomes soon!), creating internal communication tools for staff and clients, making designs and conducting research for the nutrition app and having long conversations on the Google helpline to smooth over some technical mishaps. Being able to run with my ideas with endless support from my supervisor has been exciting to new heights!

3. Education: On Tuesday, a guest speaker came in from Nationwide Children’s Hospital to talk about ARFID (avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder). In a talk mostly directed at the clinicians and dietitians around me, I followed along much more than I expected. Whether it is an Instagram post or a press release, learning more about various disorders and hearing personal encounters of health care providers is extraordinarily useful in my day-to-day communications. I am so fortunate that I am included in talks like these as well as staff emails with suggested readings. This morning, I read about terms to avoid or reconsider in the eating disorder field from the International Journal of Eating Disorders. As other fellows have said, I am already learning more in this fellowship than I have in my courses. Not just about my specific area of work but the operations of nonprofits as a whole. Being able to sit down across the table from President and CEO of The Columbus Foundation, Doug Kridler, a few days ago was a perfect mid-week inspiration. Afterwards, we all walked out to the parking lot with pure excitement to get back to our nonprofits and a generous amount of pride that these nonprofits are in Columbus.

I’m assuming that redecorating won’t be on the agenda for next week, but I am eager to see how much more I learn through The Center and The Columbus Foundation in the weeks ahead!

Being told that something I made is “pretty” or “beautiful,” even, is not something I’m used to hearing. I grew up in the shadow of my younger sister’s incredible artistic talent, and I accepted a long time ago that the things I drew or painted tended to elicit amused head shaking rather than awe and praise. I’ve never minded, though–my sister can draw up masterpieces in a matter of days with her nimble handiwork; I could spend a year perfecting a drawing and it’d still be laughably horrendous.

But this week, my coworkers at KIPP told me that the things I designed and created were, and I quote, “pure awesomeness” and “beautiful.” Okay… no, I’m not talking about anything I painted (sigh), but instead about my data spreadsheets. Don’t laugh!  While there are times when it feels like I’m just running numbers for the sake of watching my formulas do their thing, the reports that I’m making actually get used all around the office… or even seen and complimented by the Executive Director of KIPP Columbus herself! The numbers matter, as I’ve talked about in my previous blogs, so that KIPP can have cold, hard evidence of the difference that they’re making for their students. And what a difference that is–their end goal is to create a pre-K through 12th grade system that helps their KIPPsters get “To and Through College.” They want every single student to graduate high school AND college so that they can have as many opportunities for success open to them as possible.

Although a lot of my work here is on the micro data level, I went on some pretty amazing field trips this week that highlighted the bigger picture of things at KIPP. Currently, KIPP is working on building a brand new high school and primary school so that it can finally house all grades of students. KIPP is sort of like a college campus, in that all of its buildings are on the same area of land, located just within a few feet from each other. This week, I traveled via golf cart with the staff to explore the construction sites. 

Here’s a photo of the outside of KIPP’s new high school building, which promises to be absolutely stunning. KIPP’s campus is on an old golf course, meaning it’s surrounded by gorgeous fields filled with trees and wildflowers–and the new high school and primary school are filled with windows and open spaces to allow the students to appreciate the wonderful views. KIPP works so hard on cultivating its faculty and students inside the buildings that it seems only right to have a beautiful building exterior to match. Below is a photo of me (wearing my very own KIPP shirt, and my coworker’s bright pink shoes because I didn’t have closed-toe ones for the site…oops!) and some of the KIPP Columbus staff, as well as one very impressive KIPP Columbus alumnus and a super excited construction worker. It was a fun and uplifting trip, showing all the ways that KIPP works to really Prove The Possible (just like our shirts say!) and give their KIPPsters all the help and guidance they can. 

“To take care of those nobody else pays attention to” are words of Catherine Nelson Black, who founded LifeCare Alliance in 1898. Throughout the last few weeks, I have been able to observe the daily logistics and operations of LifeCare, and how various small pieces come together to make the organization function and be successful. My desk is in the middle of the office, where there are open cubes, so without intentionally eavesdropping I often overhear a lot that is going on throughout the day. I hear a driver supervisor calling clients to make sure they are alright if they did not answer their door when their meal was delivered that day, a social worker calling clients for assessments, clients calling the front desk to cancel their meal for that day because of a doctor’s appointment, and another driver supervisor calling a volunteer to ask if they can cover a meal route, just to name a few examples. While these people in the office are not making direct contact with clients, they are a small but essentially large piece in making sure all 5,000 meals get delivered each day and all clients are served.

This past week, I was able to shadow a social worker complete in-home assessments, which are required by funders, to make sure clients are using LifeCare’s services appropriately. I was also able to lead bingo three times, serve lunch to clients at the park of roses, and work the front desk at Carrie’s Café. All of these things included interaction with clients and those that LifeCare serves daily. This was a great reminder as to why the services LifeCare provides are so important and needed in our community. Many seniors would be unable to stay in their homes, if it weren’t for Meals-on-Wheels or Help-at-Home. For example, one woman said she would be unable to cook for her and her husband because she cannot stand up for that long. I found it extremely beneficial to encounter and interact with those who benefit from LifeCare’s services. It was a really great reminder as to why each person in the office works extremely diligent to make sure clients are able to receive their meals or eat at a dining site. In addition, it was a great reminder as to why I am working with LifeCare Alliance this summer. I feel as if it is so important to take a step back every now and then to see the larger picture of why your small piece is significant in the overall operation. As I prepare for week five, I feel extremely motivated to continue to work on my projects to the best of my ability, because of the impact they can have on LifeCare Alliance and the people they serve.

This week has completely blown me away… I feel speechless. I think it’s important to take a pause and think about some of the events of the week (and maybe take a few minutes to look at CNN and BBC). I think if I just wrote about my direct experiences in this blog post, I would be doing a disservice to this fellowship. The Columbus Foundation Fellowship does not only help the fellows, but it helps the community. These organizations are chosen because they are making positive impacts in Columbus.

At our fellows session, Douglas Kridler, the President and CEO of The Columbus Foundation came and spoke to us. His talk was empowering to say the least. One of the many inspirational messages that he conveyed is the growth and energy of Columbus, Ohio. While I won’t be able to convey all of his sentiments nor as eloquently as he did in this blog post, I will list a few key points. First and foremost, as some of you may have heard, Columbus was the winner of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Smart City Grant. A total of $50 million has been awarded from the U.S. DOT and Vulcan Inc. for Columbus to make public transportation innovations. Second, Mr. Kridler briefly talked about Andrew Nelson’s National Geographic article, “Why All the Cool Kids Love Columbus, Ohio.” While Nelson has some great places listed, I’d like to share my personal favorites (a few of which are also mentioned in his article).

One of the favorite things about Columbus is it’s coffee shops. Coffee shops were some of the first places I had the opportunity to explore outside of the Ohio State campus. My coffee shop preferences have changed over the years, but my current favorite places are Stauf’s (Grandview location despite the terrible wi-fi) and Caffe Apropos. Of course, we also have some great used record stores and book shops. I am a fan of The Book Loft in German Village.

Like Nelson also mentioned in his article Columbus is home to lots of great art, like the Wexner Center for the Arts (free for college students!) and The Columbus Museum of Art (free on Sundays!). The latter of which, I had the chance to grab some lunch at with some of the fellows.

Black Bean Burger from Schokko Art Cafe inside The Columbus Museum of Art

Although that veggie burger was tasty, Columbus is home to lots of other fantastic food. I honestly don’t know where to begin with Columbus food, because there are so many options. Yesterday, at work, we spent a bit of time talking about Condado Tacos, but today I’m really craving Indian food…or maybe vegan food. With so many options and new restaurant openings sometimes the biggest problem is deciding where to eat is where to try first.  Of course, I personally can’t fail to mention the Columbus ice cream scene– there’s Jeni’s, Graeter’s, and Cookie Dough Creamery just to name a few. Should we rename Columbus the Ice Cream Capital of the World??

In all seriousness, Columbus clearly has some great opportunities to take advantage of. One of the most important of which is the sense of community and progress that can be felt and is praised. For example, last weekend was the Columbus Pride Festival and Parade and this weekend is ComFest. These events celebrate the community and its members.

Columbus is thriving in many ways. This is not to say that changes don’t need to be implemented to improve aspects of this city. However, whether it’s lack of public transportation or high infant mortality rates, there are people stepping in and trying to make changes.  If you have been following along with the news (or did as I recommended and read articles from CNN or BBC), you can see we live in a world where some people are perpetuating hate and xenophobia. In Columbus, improvements are being made in the city and I’ve surrounded myself with like-minded individuals. Columbus in many ways feels like a cultural safe haven in a world with individuals who would like to halt progress.

As fellows for The Columbus Foundation we have been given a wonderful opportunity to give back to the Columbus community through our non-profits. However, everyone can contribute to this city. One should take advantage of all this city has to offer AND give back to this city. I don’t know what my future holds, but I am happy that for this summer I get to provide educational programing to those who are traditionally under-served in Columbus. I hope in the future that I will be able to make an even bigger impact on society.