Columbus Foundation Fellowship Programs

One of my many jobs at Habitat For Humanity MidOhio this Summer has been converting all of the old news clips where Habitat was featured onto our newly founded Vimeo page.  Yes, this task was rather long and taxing, but ultimately it gave me the opportunity to learn more about my non-profit before my time here.  These news clips have basically acted as a story book or documentary of the past few years in this organization.

What you learn from watching these sort of clips is how consistently they have been able to help the surrounding communities and revitalize certain neighborhoods.  It is easy as a non-profit organization to develop goals and aspirations when you first found it, but putting those words into action is where things become difficult.  But looking back at these videos has shown me that Habitat For Humanity MidOhio has had a prominent presence throughout the past decade in Central-Ohio.

Below are some of the videos that I converted as part of my duties here as the video services specialist.  Please take a look and appreciate this video proof of why my non-profit organization is so cool!

Yesterday, President Obama released his new climate plan — one that the New York Times describes as “tough, [but] achievable”. The President, who turns 54 today (HAPPY BIRTHDAY BARRY O!), outlined his plan to crack down on carbon dioxide pollution from power plants. This plan puts an emphasis on the use of carbon-free energy sources like solar power and wind and is already drawing backlash from certain members of Congress. While the plan isn’t directly related to reducing harmful emissions produced by vehicles, it provides an opportunity for me to reflect on why the mission of Clean Fuels Ohio is important.

It’s 2015 and we are still *sort-of* having a debate about whether or not the climate is changing at a faster pace due to pollution caused by humans. Depending on who you ask, anywhere from 97 to 99 percent of credible scientists back the statement that humans are directly responsible for causing rapid climate change. Some people have a problem calling it “global warming” citing colder temperatures but semantics aside, it’s a virtually undeniable fact that power plants built by humans and vehicles driven by humans have been having a negative impact on our environment. How men and women running our government can continue to deny these facts is beyond me, but that’s a different story…

President Obama obviously faces more criticism on climate change than we do here at Clean Fuels Ohio, but the skeptics are out there. How long until people accept that protecting our planet IS a valid reason to change our behavior? It’s all well-and-good to change based on political pressures, or economic reasons, or business competition, but why is the environment seemingly an afterthought? NEWS FLASH: we have one planet — and we are destroying it. Whether or not you change your behavior because on politics, or business, or economics is fine by me, but I encourage everybody to start taking the environment a little more seriously.

Protecting our planet IS a valid reason to change our behavior.

Nine weeks of the summer fellowship is in the books. One week left. Where did the summer go? In hindsight, it has been a productive, didactic, albeit short, experience with the Vineyard Community Center.

In this penultimate work week, I completed one of my two fellowship projects–the development of an instructional  volunteer workbook–and I invested a significant amount of time preparing an interesting naturalization case. In this particular case, the newlyweds happened to be just a few months older than myself, which sparked some personal reflection. The bride is a natural born American, however the groom immigrated to the United States for college; their paths fatefully crossed while pursuing their education, and following a presumably Disney-esque first two years together, they decided to get married. Of course, the groom, not being an American and only in this country on a temporary student visa, must apply to become an American, a process known as naturalization, in order to permanently stay in the States.

The naturalization process is a long and burdensome one. In an effort to deter “citizenship marriages”– where a couple gets married and files naturalization paperwork solely for the purpose of naturalization, and after successfully achieving their goal the couple divorces and moves on–the United States government has created a cumbersome process for those seeking to gain citizenship through marriage. The government does not want to be taken advantage of, but simultaneously, it wants to provide an avenue for citizenship for those couples who are genuinely married. Thus, the burden of proof of marriage is enormous and must be satiated with a myriad of evidence. The number of requisite forms that necessitate legal assistance is also quite impressive, and I had the fortuitous opportunity to work on all of these forms this past week. Subsequently, I sat in on a meeting between the couple and my boss, where I was able to put the faces to the names. Invariably upon meeting the clients that I completed some casework for, I feel an immense sense of satisfaction in my work. Although the majority of it is done on a laptop in an impersonal cubicle, it is making a profound impact on the lives of real people, who have pressing problems that we are helping assuage. The casework is ongoing, again, the reality of this sort of work is that there are rarely any opportunities for instant gratification, but it was an inspiring way to complete my 9th and penultimate week as a Columbus Foundation Summer Fellow.

Monday, I started off the day buying and preparing supplies for our outreach visits for the last two weeks. It’s crazy to think about how quickly these eight weeks have flown by and I’m already on my ninth week! Laura and I set up the clinic for the large goodie bag stuffing event we are having on Tuesday. We’ve invited our outreach volunteers to come help stuff goodie bags we use in our outreach presentations. These bags are such a critical component of the outreach program because it provides information about our clinic services and oral health supplies, including toothbrush, toothpaste, 2 minute brushing timer, and floss. After we finished our set-up prep, I headed out to SON Ministries Summer Lunch Program located at Hilliard Church of Christ. We saw about 30 kids and I was able to give one of our large group presentations to the kids. After the presentation, we had our traditional games and activities stations set up for the kids. I finished up the day working on some projects back at the clinic.

Tuesday was the big day where we had our Good Bag Stuffing Event! We spent the morning with the final parts of setting up for the event and ordering lunch for our volunteers. The event went extremely well. We stuffed almost 1,000 bags in about an hour! We had a strong showing from our KidSMILES volunteers, including some volunteers that have not had the chance to help out before.

In the evening, I had an extremely productive, two hour meeting with Cynthia Hendricks, the President of the Central Ohio Association of School Nurses (COASN). We discussed promoting KidSMILES materials and services to members of the COASN and working with school nurses around central Ohio, especially school nurses at Columbus City Schools, to schedule our oral health education outreach visits. One of the most important takeaways from this meeting was I learned how frequently school nurses see the consequences of lack of access to oral health care in schools. I also learned about the licensure and training process to become a school nurse, as well as that school nurses are trained to perform basic oral health screenings and refer children to dentists.

COASN Logo from http://www.coasn.org/

On Wednesday, we had an informative Learning Session by Annie Gallagher, President/Owner at Gallaghar Consulting Group, Inc. which specializes in helping organizations with branding, strategic planning, executive coaching, market research, and more. Our session focused on personal branding and communicating our story. We had engaging and light-hearted discussions about ourselves, and I will definitely be applying much of the advice that we got. I headed back to the clinic and prepped for our two outreach visits on Thursday!

Thursday was my busiest outreach day with two outreach visits! Our first visit was in to WARM Summer Lunch Program at Abby Lane Apartments off of Morse Road. We saw over 120 kids at this event – it was great to see how much energy they had! We set up our games and activities stations and kids were at our table the whole time! Later in the evening, I visited Ohio State Star House  with one of our dental hygienist volunteers, Jenni Ernst, for our second outreach visit of the summer to this site. We visited OSU Star House back in Week 2 of my fellowship. As I mentioned in my earlier blog post, OSU Star House is an amazing organization that provides food, a place to drop-in, and other resources for homeless youth in central Ohio. For this visit, we got the chance to talk to all new youth. Just like my first visit, I was really impressed and happy of how such a great resource Star House is for these youth. However, it’s really sad that this center is one of the few resources these youth have.

I had already finished 40 hours for this week by the end of Thursday! It was a really busy and productive week. I did some extra work on Friday and bought some supplies for the clinic, organized our outreach materials, and worked on my other projects! I’m definitely going to remain involved with KidSMILES however I can after my fellowship ends. Based on my interests in dental public health, non-profits, access to health care, and dentistry, continuing to help is a perfect fit for me. I am planning on volunteering as much as I can with outreach visits. I also plan to continue some of the projects I started, such as working with expanding our outreach program to more schools and locations.

While I absolutely love the time I spend at ECDI, one of my favorite parts of the day is my afternoon commute home on the bus. At 4:24 every day I catch the #9 bus, a route that winds its way through the near-east side all the way to the center of downtown. Thanks to the 670 and 71 highways, many people drive past these areas of Columbus on their commute every day without ever realizing that they exist. If not for my utter lack of driving ability, I’d probably be one of those people. It may take me an extra 40 minutes to get home every day, but I’m grateful that my commute this summer has given me a chance to see parts of my hometown that are often only glimpsed from the freeway.

The #9 bus has a quiet dignity. Most passengers follow the unspoken rules of bus etiquette: Have exact change when you get on the bus. Don’t sit directly next to someone if another seat is available. Don’t stare. Don’t make small talk. Thank the bus driver when you exit. I don’t think these rules are meant to be unfriendly, but rather to respect each other’s rights to sit quietly after a long day’s work and not be bothered. Most of us look out the windows, watching the city skyline grow closer until we are eventually envelop by it. By this time the details of my route are familiar and comforting. There’s the men smoking outside of the Misty Blues Private Club. There’s the Milo-Grogan Community Center, where summer camp kids just as the day camp takes a recess on the playground. There’s the sprawling Fort Hayes education center with its eerily boarded up windows. Sometimes we pass other buses, their shadowy figures staring through tinted glass at shadowy figures of us. Finally, the bus joins the sea of traffic converging at High and Broad in the very heart of Columbus. I always feel a twinge of hesitation as I pull the yellow cord to signal the driver of my intended stop, knowing that when the doors open I will have to step out of my peaceful reflection and into bustling heat of downtown.

The work I have done this summer, and a good chunk of the overall work done by Clean Fuels Ohio, is geared towards our Midwest Green Fleets Forum & Expo which takes place annually here in Columbus. The two day conference hosted at the Columbus Convention Center in late September draws national attention from fleets, government officials, professionals, and businesses interested in transitioning to alternative fuel. Clean Fuels Ohio partners with the Municipal Equipment Maintenance Association and various organizations to present the event which features educational sessions, business tours, and ride and drive sessions with alternative fuel vehicles. The Midwest Green Fleets Forum & Expo also features the announcement of the 2015 certified Ohio Green Fleets — a project I have spent a great deal of time on this summer.

Businesses, individuals, and fleets who become members of Clean Fuels Ohio gain numerous benefits from policy advocacy to press releases but the Ohio Green Fleets certification enables non-members to promote their progressive use of alternative fuels, resulting in a tremendous impact for their fleets. A large portion of my work this summer has involved contacting current and potential certified fleets and analyzing specific information given to us to determine whether or not the fleet will qualify for the 2015 ceremony. This was a slow process to begin but now that the Midwest Green Fleets event is right around the corner, things are becoming hectic and the work feels validated.

This is one of the signature events Clean Fuels Ohio is associated with so having the opportunity to be invested in the process has been rewarding. Hopefully, I will still be apart of the CFO team come September so I can attend the conference and see the results of countless hours of work put in by everybody on staff. Seemingly there has been increased interest in this years’ event but only time will tell…

I cannot believe week 9 is over.  This summer has truly flown by.  I finished up my programs team presentation last week and will be presenting this Wednesday.  I’m really looking forward to presenting all I’ve learned this summer, but I’m also really nervous because I’ve never done a presentation for work before. This is one of those times where I feel like wait you’re letting me do a presentation?! But I’m not even a real adult yet.

I almost finished my presentation for the luncheon last week.  I’ll be fine tuning my script and synthesizing some things today.  Hopefully I can present my numbers in an interesting way and not bore everyone to death. This 20 second a slide thing is more difficult than I anticipated it being.

Today I’ll be going through training to be a wish granter, which I’m extremely excited about.  You have to be 21 to grant wishes and my birthday is in a week.  It was lucky for me our Volunteer Program Manager decided to do a staff express training right before my birthday. Wish granters are our volunteers who are the liaison between us and the wish families.  The volunteers get to meet with the families and help the child determine their one true wish.  It’s rewarding, not that time consuming, and we’re always looking for wish granting volunteers.

I’m still working on averages, but I’m not sure if I’ll get them done by the end of the week.  This last week is difficult for me because I feel as if I’ve done everything I wanted to accomplish and other useful projects will take time I don’t have.  Also, the fact that in a week I’ll be on my way to Vegas with my grandma is heavily on my mind at all times and I’m ready for this week to fly by.  Although, my boyfriend said not to wish this week away because 21 is the last exciting birthday I’ll have.

It is so hard to believe that this experience is almost over. It seems to have gone by so fast. I have learned so much, and can barely keep track of all of it… it is overwhelming in the greatest way! 

The revisiting of the 1997 Ask The Land survey has gone great this summer! We have had so many different people out to the land, graciously sharing with us their expertise and passion in their fields of biology. Now that we have a better idea of what is on the land, I have been able to put together different brochures and pamphlets for people who stop by to walk around Shepherd’s Corner. 

I just recently completed a brochure on wildflowers! There were actually so many wildflowers on the survey lists compiled from Dan Boone, Jenny Adkins, Mark Dilley, Jim Davidson, and Sr. Marguerite that I had to split the flowers up into two brochures; Spring Wildflowers (blooming March to May) and Summer Wildflowers (Blooming June to September). The spring wildflowers brochure emphasizes the web of life, and how the plants rely on the creatures of the Earth for seed dispersal, and those creatures rely on the plants for shelter and food.

The brochure is also fun to look at because there are some interesting random facts about some of the flowers! For example, the corm (bulb) of Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) was used by Native Americans to create salve for injuries and joint pain! How cool is that! This not only tells about the relationship between plants and humans, but also about how long that plant has been in existence! This fascinating bit of information also brings about some serious thinking about the continued existence of plants like these. These wildflowers have been around for hundreds of years; sheltering animals, supplying nutrients into the soil for other plants, providing food for animals, or even aiding humans medicinally. It is up to us to protect our environment and the others that use it as their home.

It is so easy to disregard a problem, and place it onto the next in line… in our case, the next generation. However, we need to act now, and protect our Earth. These plants have been here much longer than us, and we have no right to think that our existence as humans is more important than theirs.

So here is a question to think about… hundreds of years from now, will people be able to walk the fruits of the earth, come across Jack-in-the-pulpit and say ,”Hey, this plant existed back during the times of Native Americans, and it still exists today!”? And if not, how can we make it so that they can?

I remember being a kid I always loved summers! Like so many kids, we get so excited summer starts and a little sad when it ends.  It only seemed fit that for my last week of programming at the YMCAs of Central Ohio we celebrated summer.

On Tuesday at the Gahanna YMCA, we did  craft and had fun in the sun!  The rain held off for our two hours of fun, and it was great!  First, the kids started inside with a craft.  The craft was definitely experimental, so I was not sure if it was going to work.  Each kid was able to pick as many crayons as they wanted and whatever color they wanted.  All of the crayons had to be peeled.  The kids were given a blank piece of paper and tape.  Simply, kids were suppose to tape the peeled crayons in a shape or object on the white piece of paper.  The kids went outside and put their piece of paper on the black top.  The crayons melted on the piece of paper to make a fun design!  Unfortunately, the crayons did not melt well so the kids were able to take the papers home to finish the craft on their own!  The remainder of the time was spent outside with bubbles, side walk chalk, and gaga ball!  Gaga ball is a new, arising game in recreational activities.  It was great to watch the kids learn and play a new game together.

On Wednesday at the North YMCA, we went straight outside!  We played with water balloons for the first 15 minutes, but was rained out.  This was a great opportunity for me to go with the flow, and deal with unpredictability.  The kids and I played board games instead.  Although, it was hard to see my original plans not work out, it was great to see that we still had so much fun enjoying each other’s company!

Hey everyone!

First off, thank you to anyone and everyone who has been following my summer adventure of working for a nonprofit arts organization! It has been an absolutely phenomenal learning experience and…I get to continue working here in the fall! (guess they liked me!)

This fall, I will be continuing with my fellowship duties of coordinating the Junior Docents (who also get to continue working this fall), working with assisting training the adult docents, coordinating our educational outreach to Columbus area school districts, grant writing and grant research, as well as working on the internship program. And did I mention I’ll be doing this while finishing my Master’s degree full time and working as a TA? It is going to be a busy next year for sure, but I am IMMENSELY excited for the opportunity to continue working for this organization that is truly enhancing the cultural fabric of the Columbus arts and culture scene.

This week was no less hectic. We actually had a decent amount of tours that we gave this week. By we, I mean my Junior Docents and I, because they have been working so hard and are finally ready to assist on tours. They have been such a blessing on these tours as it gives me a chance to catch my breath! 

We had the pleasure of hosting the Pheasant Run Boys and Girls Club Summer Program this past Wednesday. It was a great group to take around the galleries. The kids were so engaged and extremely inquisitive and excited about the artwork. It reminded me again about how important the work is that we do here. We had the chance to give these kids an amazing (I hope) experience outside of what they do everyday. It is not uncommon for school-aged tours to sometimes get a little loud, but these guys were loudly discussing the artworks because they were so excited and engaged. It was so much fun!

Even more fun that I am looking forward to this weekend is our free Family Day event that we host once a month to bring in the community to the galleries free of charge. It is a fun day with a larger volume of guests, so there is much more interacting with the guests and larger tour groups. It is such a fun day and if you’re looking for something to do, stop on by and say hi! I would love to see you!

Til next time,

Jessie