Columbus Foundation Fellowship Programs

Quiet.  The hallways are empty, the lights are low, the sounds of running feet are absent, and the chaos is paused for a brief moment.  Our week off from camp was a blissful reminder of the beauty of a quiet classroom and a relaxed environment.  We could walk around without being mobbed with questions, could sit down and eat lunch in peace instead of shoving it down while prepping a classroom for the afternoon, and even take a bathroom break!  Don’t get me wrong…I LOVE kids and camp…but getting that moment of respite reminds you of all those little challenges that children create.  That being said, I’m definitely ready for the campers to come back!  They’re all such great kids, and there are a couple of campers coming back for another week, so I’m eager to see them.

This week, besides the planning and preparation for the last two weeks of camp, I got to help set-up my very first public art installation.  Although that sounds really complicated – and sometimes it can be, depending on the art to be installed – in this case it meant taking Keith Haring-inspired peace flags that the campers made to the Grandview Library and helping my boss to hang and display them.  These peace flags, along with ones from all over the country, will be displayed at the museum with the fall exhibit Enough Violence: Artists Speak Out. The museum is still collecting peace flags (until Aug. 8), so if you are interested in making one, check out the information and instructions here!

This week I also got to help out with an adult craft class with a ceramic artist featured in the current exhibit.  The class was offered on Tuesday and Wednesday and there was a full house both times!  I got to get my hands messy and make a clay head/face wall decoration along with the rest of the class.  I forgot to take a picture when I was done, but I’ll share when I get the piece back from firing!

The ALS Association has had an ongoing parade of meetings for the past week or so since we had a couple of board members visit us on Tuesday. We’ve been discussing the direction of care services (the branch I work in), and how to continue to build our service base for our patients. It’s been really interesting to sit in on those meetings. I sat on the board of another organization and participated in their meetings and planning events, but this has let me get some perspective on how other organizations handle strategic planning and how a functional leader motivates people in planning. I also got to see Alex briefly on Tuesday when he arrived to drop off a wheelchair donated to us by CRIS.

I also got to attend a fundraising event last week, which was an ice cream social and an opportunity to discuss the Walk to the Cure, the ALS walk that’s held annually. As someone who is terrible at asking people for money, it was great to watch Liz, who handles our fundraising and marketing and clearly has a gift for it. It was also clearly a fun event for our patients who were able to make it, since it let them bring their kids and their families and socialize with other patients in a setting outside the support group or clinic. They enjoyed the ice cream, too.

As a care services team we’ve also been getting together to discuss how to progress from providing an “expanded” level of services to our patients to providing a “comprehensive” level. It was interesting to see how the National branch of the ALSA broke down the services offered into different levels to better understand how to move from one place to the next, and I appreciated that the National chapter put together this means of categorizing without placing judgments on chapters that don’t have the staff or money to afford a broader range of services. For us, it’s a matter of finding out how much funding we can secure and what services we want to try to provide first. It’s been exciting to be part of a growing organization this summer and also have my opinion and thoughts on the programs I work with listened to and respected when I weigh in.

This past Sturday FLOW partnered with Anheuser-Busch (AB) to do a clean up at Glen Echo Ravine. The event went from 9:00am-12:00pm and concluded with a Budweiser toast at Patrick J’s in Clintonville. The cleanup included volunteers from AB Columbus, FLOW members and community volunteers. 

      

The event included trash pickup from the stream/ravine/park and invasive species removal from a local pollinator garden. It also was the maiden voyage for FLOW’s GOPRO camera which I kept with me for the duration of the cleanup. 

During the course of the cleanup park goers would stop and join in grabbing a bag and some gloves, and a local kid and his dad assisted while we spotted some Crayfish in the creek. 

Some interesting items found include several bank cards, an Engineers Scale, and aWoman’s size 8 shoe. We removed 242 pounds of trash and filled 11 yard waste bags with removed Japanese Knotweed and Honeysuckle which are both invasive species. 

At the same time as the cleanup the Glen Echo birding club was making its weekly walk through the ravine and stopped to show me some pictures of a Barred Owl that was being chased by a Coooper’s hawk. They invited me to like their facebook page and to come back for a future walk with them. 

The pollinator garden was also mulched and planted with parsley and various native wildflower seeds. 

AB was a great partner and from what I gathered sounded like a great place to work at. The shirts for volunteering are pretty awesome and I’m happy to wear the one that I received. 

Week 7 of my summer as a Columbus Foundation summer fellow at Homeport was all about convergence.  During a crazy week filled with learning sessions, backpack stuffings, produce distributions, and Business Process Management I saw so many things that have defined my summer come together.  First and foremost my main project of documenting the processes and procedures of Homeport’s Volunteer Engagement has progressed at warp speed; I have now reached page 78 of my single spaced document and I still have plenty left to write! This major project that seemed like such a daunting task at the beginning of the summer is now taking shape and I can see the end product fast approaching.  More importantly, however, I have begun to take on more and more responsibility in leading the events and processes I am writing about.  The backpack stuffings are under way and we have stuffed 457 backpacks to date! Not only are we continually adjusting and preparing for more backpack stuffings, but we are now preparing for our backpack distribution events in August, at which the children will receive their new backpacks and school supplies and participate in fun activities.  I have been tasked with preparing back to school related crafts to go along with their new backpacks, so I’m preparing locker picture frames, beaded key chains, and a decorating station where kids can spice up their new folders/binders they receive in their backpacks.

With everything converging and taking shape in the backpack realm it’s easy to forget everything else that continues to run within Volunteer Programs.  On Wednesday we put on another Produce Market at one of our rental communities in partnership with the Mid-Ohio Foodbank.  No matter how busy we are preparing to distribute backpacks, everything stops in order to help provide free, fresh, and healthy food for our residents and their children; food that is much needed during the summer months, in which many children lack access to healthy food since they are not receiving school provided meals.

On top of the Backpack Drives and the Produce Markets I am still doing research on volunteer orientation best practices in order to make recommendations for improvement of Homeport’s volunteer orientation processes.  This aspect of my summer project has allowed me to visit other non-profits and witness the great work they are doing in the community.  Last week I had the opportunity to visit the Ronald McDonald House volunteer orientation.  Not only was it great to see their volunteer practices and tour their incredible facilities, but it was really fun to see another summer fellow’s work first hand.  I got to see the things Sean has been doing with Ronald McDonald House and have a clearer view of the impact we as a group of summer fellows is having on the community.

Another point of convergence I experienced this last week was exposure to another fellow’s summer project through my dad, of all people.  My dad runs the community garden at our church on the East side and is a member of the Greater Columbus Growing Coalition.  He came home one night this week to inform me that he had received an invitation to attend an event put on by the Mid-Ohio Foodbank to raise awareness about hunger and the impact community gardens can make.  The invitation was from none other than Colleen, their CF summer fellow.  It has been so fun to see people’s projects impacting the community at large and to experience the convergence of all of our great work this summer.  The next three weeks are going to fly by but I’m so excited to witness further points of convergence and experience the impact we can make on the community together.

It is very rare that I get to accompany a client starting from their arrival in the US and then taking them through the entire resettlement process of finding an apartment, delivering the home supplies kit, going to the furniture bank and going to Franklin County, but this week was the closest I have come. Unfortunately I had a doctor’s appointment on Friday and was unable to help with the airport pickup, but everything else I have been able to do. I worked closely with the new arrival’s US tie named Fadumo. Fadumo’s brother and his family are the arrivals coming from Ethiopia and she wanted EVERYTHING to be ready by the time her brother, his wife, and his 7 children arrived. Fadumo has been in the US for more than 15 years and her family and her sons have been quite successful, so she was dead set on making sure her brother’s family living standards matched hers. She is a strong woman who knows wheat she wants and when she wants it done and was a pleasure to work with this past week. She wants to get an apartment for her brother’s family in Blacklick, but in the mean time she spruced up the temporary two apartments that they would be living in, working throughout the day bringing in rugs, curtains, and picking out furniture from the Furniture Bank that met her standards all while fasting for Ramadan! Here are some pics of the apartment:

Fadumo’s brother Abdihamid and his family are extremely lucky to have this kind of support before arriving in America. Most of our clients either don’t have any family or if they do they don’t have enough money to deck out their rented apartment or find them a new living space in a nice area of town. This arrival is about as perfect as they come, especially when it is a large family of nine. Next week the whole family will be taken for health screenings and to apply for social security at Franklin County.

One of the Boys and Girls Clubs National programs is Diplomas to Degrees, a college preparation program. Therefore the Boys and Girls Clubs of Columbus travels to different colleges to expose our teen members to different campuses! This past Friday we traveled to Athens, OH for Ohio University’s Summer Showcase! Let me preface this by saying I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, The Ohio State University, but it was really nice to visit another campus and expose the members to different facets of higher education!

The day began with a general overview of the program, a welcome to campus, and an explanation of the admissions process conducted by their Director of Admissions. After the opening session we had the option of attending several academic sessions ranging from Biological Sciences, to Engineering, to Communications. While we were supposed to attend the Engineering session we went to the wrong room at ended up in the session for the Scripps School of Journalism. This was a great presentation to attend because OU’s School of Journalism is one of the best in the nation! I learned that they have a partnership with the Miss Universe Pageant and have several students intern with them. Additionally, they sent some photojournalism students to Brazil for the World Cup!

After the academic session we ate lunch…that is definitely an understatement! We feasted! It reminded me of my days at OSU and Sunday brunch at North Commons! One of the teens asked, “Can we get seconds?” I had to keep myself from laughing because I always get seconds at college cafeterias! We ended the day with a tour of their new union and a residence hall!

The trip was great! The students were really excited to get out of Columbus and see something new. It also started the important dialogue about college. Although most of them were in 8th or 9th grade it is never too early to talk about college! They asked several questions to the admissions representatives, myself, and other students about life in college.

I can’t believe I only have 3 weeks left! Next week, I will have to wrap up the rest of the Brain Gain evaluations, prepare to train other staff to conduct the post-assessments after I leave, and go to Nationwide Insurance for another field trip!

“I feel like we’ve created a culture of helplessness.” This remark came from a person who works at a non-profit organization largely supported by volunteers from low-income communities.  The person meant this as both a joke and a reflection of her own tendency to “micro-manage,” but she raises an interesting point about one of the many professional limitations for impoverished people. When a person’s voice is constantly undervalued or silenced, it is difficult if not impossible to develop the skills and confidence needed to work independently.

We work with many volunteers at the food pantry who struggle regularly with financial and food insecurity. The most interesting and unsettling trend I’ve noticed among these volunteers is an anxious need for decisions to be “approved” by someone they see as “higher up.” A handful of times, I’ve told a volunteer to just trust their own judgment when approaching an unexpected task, and I am almost always met with confusion and frustration.

Unfortunately, many people write off this discomfort with working independently as a sign of laziness and stupidity. But, what reason should a person fighting in poverty have to value independent initiative in the workplace? Can you name a common, minimum wage job where creativity and personalized approach is valued or encouraged? What happens when a person at the bottom of the ladder makes decisions without first checking in with their boss? What happens when a person in poverty challenges a system or government that traps them in poverty but also acts as a gatekeeper of the resources they need to survive?

The hard truth is that there is little (if any) room in poverty to deviate from the norm. When ensuring your family will eat tonight with the lights on is a constant balancing act of working, scrimping, accessing assistance, etc., stakes are much higher. The smallest professional risk could backfire and cause the whole act to topple over. Aligning as seamlessly as possible with set expectations is the safest and sole choice for most people in poverty.

Realizing that many of our volunteers cannot recognize the worth of their own voice or insight has helped me understand the significance of and need for arts based programs for disadvantaged youth. Often, these programs are defended as institutions that help “keeps kids off the streets.” This is true but a very vague description of the real influence of these programs. Valuing and making room for personal creativity allows kids a safe space to test their voice, their intuition, their decision -making skills, and their independence while risks are still relatively low. Celebration artistic expression instills the self-confidence kids need to grow into independent thinkers.

Trust in personal instinct is what allows people to be adaptable in new situations. It’s why we value independent thinking in higher-paying jobs. But, if a person is constantly and rigidly told what to do, what reason will they have to trust their own decision making skills? Society will tell a woman in poverty to stick to the program but then cites her lack of initiative as the reason she remain at the bottom of the ladder. It’s just another one of the dangerous catch-22s that keeps people trapped in the cycle of poverty. If we want people to comfortably access their own instincts in the workplace and apply them independently, we need to value their voice first.

The craziest thing about working at a camp is that it is essentially the same every day and every week.  It starts with morning sign-in and name tag drama (“I can’t find mine!” “Mine won’t stick!”), then a flurry of morning classes where paint, fluff, and clay fly, then everyone’s favorite part of the day (bar the complaints that we are having pretzels, not goldfish)…snack! Then lunches are consumed at the speed of light, and all the lunchtime toys and games are dispersed to all four corners of the room. Then, in the afternoon, I coerce everyone to clean up, and then we repeat it all over again, ending with a speedy but efficient clean-up of our classroom spaces and set-up to get ready for the next day.  In that sense, I’ve plateaued a bit – I know what I am doing on a daily basis, I am generally prepared for the projects that are going on, and I can kind of go on auto-pilot through the day.

But in another sense, each day is totally unique and brings its own set of challenges and adventures. Each week the campers and teen volunteers change the personality of camp.  Last week, both the teens and the campers were pretty energetic and really loud.  Great kids, but they definitely wore me out.  This week, we have a quieter, more focused group with great creative energy.  I got to teach this week, helping the campers make pillows that looked their dream houses, and I really enjoyed getting to see their creative minds in action and see their focus and dedication to their projects.  But each week brings its own crises as well, like the water bottle that spilled over a whole shelf of art, or the supplies that were supposed to last two days only lasting one, or a type of clay not working as expected.

It’s these type of challenges that keep me on my toes and keep it interesting each and every day.  We are officially at the half way point of our Young Masters Camp series (2.5 sessions down, 2.5 sessions to go!), and we have no camp next week, so it’s a great chance to recharge our batteries before the final haul. I know I’m looking forward to a quiet week!