Columbus Foundation Fellowship Programs

When I reflect about my experience in The Columbus Foundation Summer Fellowship Program, having the opportunity to receive insight and advice from various leaders in the community that are involved in the nonprofit and private sectors has been extremely beneficial, especially as I think about the start of my career, with graduating in December. Moreover, I have learned and received a plethora of valuable information about career development. During the summer fellowship experience, I had the opportunity to meet community leaders, including Ty Marsh. Mr. Marsh is Mayor Coleman’s first Chief of Staff, former President and CEO of the Columbus Chamber of Commerce, and is currently the Executive Director of The Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO). SWACO is the largest public landfill in the state of Ohio. In the meeting with Ty, I was excited to find out that he and Doug Kridler went to college together at the Ohio Wesleyan University and have remained friends since the mid 1970’s!

Ty Marsh and I. Mr. Marsh is the Executive Director of The Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO), Mayor Coleman’s first Chief of Staff, and former President and CEO of the Columbus Chamber of Commerce. 

When I look back on my experience as a former intern at the Columbus Chamber of Commerce, I realize that the skills learned and gained from that experience helped me to continue to develop both personally and professionally. Mr. Marsh has a background in public policy and government, like me. The skills learned and gained from being involved in public sector work has been easily transferrable to the nonprofit sector and performing duties at the Charitable Pharmacy of Central Ohio. Moreover, after reflecting on the insight received from both Ty Marsh and Doug Kridler in a Learning Session, it is evident that they have similar values that they have attributed to their success as leaders in the community. Mr. Kridler mentioned during a Learning Session earlier in the Fellowship that a successful nonprofit is one that is run like a business. Mr. Kridler and Mr. Marsh also both mentioned that being a reliable and good employee, along with assessing your value proposition within an organization is important. Reflecting about one’s holistic development and seeking opportunities to learn as much as possible within every experience I undertake is something I will continue to do. I appreciate having the opportunity to meet and hear words of wisdom from both Mr. Doug Kridler and Mr. Ty Marsh.

Monday and Wednesday marked my final cultural orientation teaching days. The cultural group was Somali and they were all very attentive and engaged in the material and asked good, thoughtful questions. CRIS hired a full time cultural orientation instructor who started this week. Her name is Breanne and she observed my teaching at the cultural orientation to get a feel for what the classes and information are like. This was the first time I have trained someone for a position who was much older than me which I thought would be difficult, but Breanne is very relaxed, attentive, and respects my opinion and my experience as a teacher despite my younger age. She even joked how I got this gig as a Summer Fellow with 3/4’s of a Bachelors degree completed while she has masters in teaching English as a second language.

Wednesday was a surreal in the sense that I personally witnessed the emotional baggage of one of our clients. While Brienne and I were waiting for a case worker to bring the remaining clients to cultural orientation, we sat around with some of the students and talked about Somalia and the Somali language. I pulled out my work computer and was searching a map of Somalia and various pictures of what the capital Mogadishu looked like before the civil war. The students were all pointing at the different areas of Somalia they were from and where they grew up, laughing and sharing stories about their childhoods their. I then pulled up a picture of Siad Barre, the Somali dictator who was deposed in 1991, marking the complete destruction of the Somali government and its plunge into anarchy. An older Somali women got excited by the photo of Barre and was describing how her class had performed a song and dance for him way before the government collapsed. She began singing the song in Somali and she progressed her face became stricken with grief and she began to cry. The memory of a country’s stability and joy now long lost was painful for her. To think how good things were before the current situation and bad they are now must have hit her at that moment. It was a reality check for me that the emotional burden of fleeing one’s country takes its toll and old wounds are slow to heal, but the strength and will to survive and create a peaceful and healthy existence for one’s family is powerful enough for people to leave their home countries and start anew somewhere else. My workload is far from over with my last day approaching, but the work has not been redundant or boring, I realize each task’s importance in helping a client get a fresh start in Columbus.

We started off the week with a visit from the National organization! Columbus was one of the stops on the Triple Play Mobile Tour promoting healthy minds, bodies, and souls. We spent the day playing kickball, basketball, and learning about healthy lifestyles!

Last week, a team from NBC 4 visited to do a story on summer brain gain! It was great to see the kids so excited about summer learning. It was rewarding to see the project I have been working on all summer get such positive attention from the students, parents, and the community at large. A clip of the story can be found below!

http://www.nbc4i.com/video?clipId=10420223&autostart=true

At the beginning of the summer I would have been surprised if you told me a representative from the National organization would visit, along with the news in one week, I would not have believed it! Although the week was already jam-packed with activities there was still one more major event!

Last Thursday I accompanied 70 or so of our members to the corner of Broad and High for the launch of our “Great Futures” campaign! The goal of the event was to promote all of the amazing out-of-school programming that takes place at the Boys and Girls Clubs during the summer and throughout the school year! We arrived on the corner of Broad and High at approximately 2:45 p.m. At 3:00 the kids started ringing cow bells to signify that “School’s Out”. The cowbells were definitely a nice touch, because they got everyone’s attention! Everyone was honking their horns and stopping in the street asking the children why they were there. We had several donors and board members attend the event as well. After the club members rang the bells for approximately 2 minutes they began to dance along to the songs “Happy” and “Let it go”. Following the dance party, we began a chant. The staff would shout “School’s Out” and the members would yell, “Club’s in!” One of the best aspects of the entire event was the scrolling marquee. Our logo along with the #GreatFutures slogan was posted on the screens at the corner of Broad and High! It was a great event and definitely helped launch the “Great Futures” campaign. It was nice to be part of the national launch that commenced in Times Square at the same time!

#GreatFutures Campaign Launch!

I cannot believe I am in my last week! My next post will include a wrap-up of my current projects as well as a reflection on the overall experience!

My work for the ALS Association has finally started to come together in the last two weeks. When I first started, they let me know that if I was able to come up with a few options regarding the loan closet for them to consider, they’d be satisfied; I’m proud that I’ve been able to do more than that.

One of the issues facing the loan closet was that it was difficult to have an effective means of keeping track of the equipment. The software that the ALS Association uses to manage it is the general database it uses for patient management, which is not set up to manage inventory very well. I think that’s one of the more challenging aspects of nonprofit work – a lot of the time you have to work with what’s available rather than what would be the most effective. I was able to arrange for some code to be written for us that would allow us to run an inventory query and track how often certain kinds of equipment were being checked out, which would allow the staff to see what was used the most often, what isn’t being used as much, and what pieces of equipment haven’t been used at all within the past few years. If the staff intends to move toward paying for space, paring down the equipment in the closet will help them get the most out of their money.

I also was involved in documenting and recording the results for our patient survey that went out in our newsletter. I haven’t used Excel much since K-12 (over ten years ago now!), so this was challenging! I had to spend a while figuring out how to execute different functions and how to align the results in the spreadsheet so they made sense, but in the end, I was able to produce useful information for the chapter regarding patient feedback. I was also able to provide feedback that let them know how they might get better results from the survey they’re planning to do next year.

As for the loan closet location itself, I’ve discovered that getting a hold of decision makers at other organizations can sometimes be the biggest hurdle. While I’ve managed to have brief conversations with durable medical equipment companies that could store our equipment, it’s mainly been to arrange time to communicate further. Generally the decision makers can’t make decisions unilaterally, so there’s time allowed for them to go and discuss it with business partners – and then getting a hold of them again after that can be another challenge! I’m confident that even if I’m unable to finalize anything with them though, I’ve laid out enough groundwork for the staff to be able to do it with minimal pains once my fellowship is done at the end of this week.

I had one of the busiest weeks of my fellowship this past week. We are gearing up for the Weeding Out Hunger workshop on food insecurity taking place this Wednesday and the amount of detail and reflection needed to make sure an event goes smoothly is tremendous. There must be a concrete purpose to an event with a desired outcome and everything in between should relate to each other and transition smoothly from one topic to the next. This becomes even more challenging in such a limited time frame of an hour and a half especially when tackling the topic of food insecurity. We had to keep reminding ourselves of the purpose and the constraints we were working under but after several brainstorming sessions and meetings going through every last minute of the workshop, I feel so much more prepared and focused. The planning of this workshop has been a huge learning experience. If anyone has ever planned an event for a large non-profit or corporation you know the intensity and the importance of making the details count. There is no room for the awkward transitions or loose agendas. There are techniques, facilitating, presentations, questions posed, notes and theme gathering. I am so excited to see how it plays out on Wednesday.On Thursday of last week I also attending the Columbus Public Health Farmers Market for people who receive food assistance from federal programs such as WIC and SNAP benefits. They receive vouchers that can be used like money at the markets to purchase local produce from surrounding areas. I have seen other farmers markets take SNAP benefits (food stamps) as well. It is truly where I think the gap of quality food and low-income can be breached and met head on. Many times the markets have a system where if you withdraw $10 of SNAP, you receive a $20 voucher worth of money to use at the farmers market. This allows for the usual deterrence of higher prices for farmers market goods to be mitigated and actually brings the price below most of the grocery store’s for the same products. The among the Foodbank, there were booths and stations set up with assistance services pertaining to new mothers, vaccinations, dental examinations, and the OSU extension program that offers free nutrition classes. Our table had cups of sliced radishes for people to try and I added some raw beets in there too. The best part of the market was when the kids would come up to our table and try the obscure vegetables without hesitation. Some weren’t too pleased with the radishes bitter finish but others grabbed more. I was really surprised. We also had computers set up with a mapping software that allows you to type in your zip code and view where produce markets are in relation to your residence. The produce markets are some of the fastest growing and in demand events the Foodbank facilitates.
Here are some photos I took of the Farmers Market

My supervisors Kerry and Bridget setting up the tablets for the map of Produce Markets

With a week left, I shouldn’t be writing about the end of summer quite yet, but the truth is, I smell fall. Friday Aug. 1 was the last day for most of our summer lunch sites, and that was a sad, rude awakening for me.

Before heading to the office that morning, I went to a site to drop off equipment for the kids to watch a movie. I got to know this particular site pretty well over the summer and I was saddened by watching the kids wrestle and play and talk and joke with each other, all together, already at the site at 9am.

Each site is very, very different. At some sites the kids just come for lunch and leave when they’re finished. At some sites, like this one, the site director took on 200% more responsibility than they are paid for and transformed the site into a sort of summer camp, encouraging the kids to come each and every day, all day long

Now that the program is over, I know the kids won’t have a place where they can meet up with all of their summertime friends. The kids played in as much harmony as kids can with each other, different ages, races, genders, and it pains me to know that for the next few weeks they won’t be playing and learning together anymore. In a few short weeks, they’ll be returning to school where the invisible borders that school age children draw around themselves and their friends will once again separate them from one another, and this giant group of eclectic children who have turned into a family of friends will cease to exist…

The children, though, had an exciting last day. They watched a movie projected onto the wall of the gym and had a pizza party, a reward from CHA and The Collective Genius for completing program-evaluation surveys. All summer, the group had been nurturing two tomato plants, and on the last day, the site director gave them to me, along with a giant Thank-You poster the kids made.

As summer ends, my fellowship concludes, and school starts, I’m thankful that I can take a little bit of the community that was created by the great kids and staff at this site…My job is so rewarding!

The Tri-Village Lions Club approached Children’s Hunger Alliance in June about having a book give-away called “Christmas in July” for children at our sites. As most of our sites are in areas with low parent participation, I didn’t know how warmly the children would receive this gesture, but it was a huge success and I was completely moved by how enthusiastic children were to receive books.

The Club visited four sites total, one site every Friday for the last four weeks. They brought heaps of children and chapter books and allowed children to pick one book for themselves and another to give as a gift, which was then wrapped and adorned with a candy cane.

The children were wildly excited about this whole idea! They nearly emptied the book collection each week. At one site, there were less kids than anticipated, so the children were allowed to take as many books as they would like, and they took full advantage! I was overwhelmed to see them excited to read.

At this site, the children were predominantly Muslim, so the event was called an “Unbirthday Party”- they loved it!

I can’t thank the wonderful people of the Tri-Village Lions Club enough for bringing these smiles and enduring gifts to children I have gotten to know this summer. The members are very giving people, and I hope to be in contact with them in the future!

                We often hear of places where the water is unsafe to drink, or there simply is no water, or there are just not adequate water treatment facilities. In fact Sudan, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan come to mind when I think of places with no water. Los Angeles and the American southwest come to mind as well, but then I tend to think that those places just mismanage their water-too many pools, and watered lawns for a semi-arid climate. But today there is a water crisis not in some far off place, but in Ohio’s fourth largest city. Toledo’s water system supplies drinking water to between 4-500,000 people. It is one of America’s crossroads, the home to Jeep, Tony Packos, and Owens Corning. If you were to stop in the glass city today for a fresh coffee you would not be allowed to order it. Drinking the water, or even cleaning or cooking with it would risk giving you diarrhea, or cause vomiting.  The cause is a toxin called microsystin which is produced by the Western Basin’s algal bloom. Algae has become an annual concern for communities that draw their water from that part of the lake, but has never caused this much of an alarm. It is unclear how long the drinking water advisory will be in effect as well as how long it will take to clear the “toxic” water from the system.

                The reason for these blooms is complicated as there are multiple issues that confound the problem. Geologically the western basin is the shallowest part of all the Great Lakes. This means that the water temperature is also the warmest and when combined with the nutrient run off from the Maumee and Sandusky Rivers creates ideal conditions for the blooms to occur. Added to this is the complexity of global climate change.  According to both models and data, the western basin continues to grow warmer each year. Increasing with temperature are large or more severe rain events that when combined with impervious surfaces, and efficiently drained fields lead to more nutrients flushing into the lake.

                However actions and goals like the ones being undertaken by organizations such as FLOW can aid in the reduction of water quality events like algal blooms. Planting more trees, and establishing no-mow buffer zones around ditches and streams can drastically reduce the rapid flow of agricultural nutrients into our rivers and streams. Projects such as the City of Columbus’s green infrastructure program that lines sewer laterals can help reduce the number of combined overflow events that dump nutrient rich effluent into our lakes, rivers and streams. Pervious concrete and pavers in place of impervious asphalt and concrete can slow down the flow of nutrients as well.

                That the largest freshwater resource in the world is suffering a water crisis is both a shame and a warning. It is in our best interest to take the problems of water more seriously if we want to continue to hold ourselves up to first world standards. Proactive steps need to be taken that will first reduce the amount of nutrient dumped into our waters and on a larger level slow down the effect of climate change. The problem may seem large and complex but the solution is as simple as planting a tree or riding your bike. Advocate for smarter policy, call your representatives to pass legislation that protects the Midwest’s greatest asset. Today should make you realize that we take our water resources for granted, and it about time we learn to take care of them.

This week has been jam packed full of activities and responsibilities. After the Columbus Foundation learning session, I went to my first WIC appointment at their clinic/office on Indianola close to Morse Rd. WIC stands for Women Infants and Children and is a supplemental nutrition program for mothers and families who are low income and need additional support to feed their infants or younger children with good, nutritional food. I went with two young Iraqi mothers and their three little children to register for the WIC coupons. The nurses weighed the children, measured their heights and tested their blood for healthy iron levels. Afterwords, we went to Meijer in Dublin and picked out their WIC approved foods for the month of July. The process was… challenging mostly because I forgot to bring in the booklet that had all of the WIC approved items in it and so unless they explicitly said “WIC approved” it was guess and check with multiple runs from the register back to the merchandise to find the right food items.

On Wednesday I conducted a one person cultural orientation for an Iranian client along with fellow coworker Parisa who speaks Persian/Farsi. Yalda Moghaddem resettled in Columbus after fleeing Iran with her 7 year old son to Turkey due to religious persecution. She is a Baha’i and Parisa told me there is a growing community of Iranian Baha’i in Columbus (they even have a cultural/religious center on Sunbury Road!). The orientation was extremely informal, I brought my laptop to her brother’s house where she is staying and we drank tea and ate chocolate sweets while I, via Parisa’s translations, explained American culture. Yalda is very humble and is ready to start working so she can support her son, but said she wanted to get back to her old career if possible. She had a Master’s in Biology and worked in a biomedical engineering lab before leaving Iran, (talk about credentials!). I explained to her that the process of getting her Iranian degree accredited in the US takes a long time, but she didn’t seem to mind as long as she could work and live in peace with her son. I continue to meet amazing people with incredible life stories and am sad to know I only have 1 week left to work with CRIS’s resettlement staff!

At the intimate cultural orientation with Parisa (far left), Yalda (2nd from left), and Yalda’s sister-in-law’s cousin Saed.