Columbus Foundation Fellowship Programs

I figured I would take the opportunity to write a blog post while it is storming outside. Today is concert day, and I have spent the last few hours getting caught in the bustle of the King Arts Complex as we set up and tear down and maybe set up again, trying to decide if the storm is going to keep us from having the Heritage Concert Series tonight or if we should go ahead and risk it.

It is funny how things seem to work at the complex. Both in the office and in the classrooms, I tend to hear the phrase “Just when you think you have seen it all…” on a daily basis. Three weeks ago, it was a busted water pipe that shut down all but one bathroom in the center. Two weeks ago, it was a busted bus window and a burnt potato that ruined the office microwave and left me trying to eat a frozen, frosted Lean Cuisine with a broken plastic fork. Last week, a burning smell caused us to evacuate the building, the kids dramatically coughing as if the whole place was burning down.  Every firetruck in Columbus rushed to the scene and surrounded our building! And, of course, for the last few weeks the only time it has stormed is on Thursday afternoons, right when we are setting up for the festival.
Believe me though, I am not complaining! These are just minor inconveniences that seem to come up. In fact, I have learned a lot through the experience. Going into the fellowship, these are things that I would never have anticipated having to deal with, but it is the reality of work. I tend to take things way too seriously, and this has taught me to lighten up. It has also showed me that part of growing closer with others is going through some not-so-perfect circumstances with them. I listened to a sermon recently called “Building a Life Framework that is Ready to Suffer” (http://www.xenos.org/teachings/?series=125). One of the final remarks that was made was that “we were never meant to suffer alone.” While these minor issues in the office are nowhere near the suffering that humans experience, or even that I have experienced in my own life, these minor issues have caused me to reflect on the role that my relationships play in my life experience. In the office, minor issues leave us to laugh and have a shared experience that we can recount later. In the Christian community of which I am a part outside of work, the relationships that I have are such an important part of making it through tougher times in life, and the more suffering we experience together, the closer we become.

This summer, I have learned SO much, but I think one of the biggest things I am learning is that I cannot neglect people who are in my life, no matter where I am. I tend to be an introvert, someone who mulls and processes and reflects and could be perfectly content to sit alone at home and just think (I love writing blogs like this one), but by the grace of God I am being transformed into someone who is able to get outside of myself and be involved with others and engaged in lives other than my own. It is such an important part of life to care about and care for others, and I am so excited to work somewhere where I have a daily opportunity to serve others and impact the community I am in.

Well, it appears we are going ahead with the festival tonight, and the storm is almost finished. Time to go set up!

An intern, a woman experiencing homeless, and I went to a city council meeting on Monday to discuss the long waitlist for shelters in Columbus.  We informed the councilmen of the long wait-list including women and veterans and the recent loss of stimulus monies to house individuals experience homelessness.  They listened and responded to our concerns.  I am planning to have a meeting with Councilmen Hearcel Craig, who gave me his phone number and told me to call him.  At this meeting, we will inform him that it is necessary for additional shelter space in churches and recreation centers to meet the demand.

Joe told us about his new social enterprise, FrameWORK.  He discussed his executive summary, funding streams, and the type of employees he wants for his workforce development program.  His goal is to hire felons with non-violent/theft offenses to do entry-level labor work.  From this meeting I learned that you need to have a good executive summary to get buy-in from investors.  Joe has collected data about the initial costs, when the company would start to make money, and the “social return on investment” (more people not relying on state assistance).

Joe also gave us advice how to improve Street Speech, the Coalition’s social enterprise.  He gave us advice how to increase the revenue of Street Speech since it is actually losing money now.  He believes that the vendors need more sales professional training and the placement of vendors should be more controlled.  We are meeting these needs by having a mystery shopper & a readership survey.

Today we carried out the first secret shopper experience.  The shoppers were able to find both negative and positive interactions of the vendors in the downtown area.  With the information I received I will discuss the results at the next vendor meeting so everyone is aware.  I plan to work with a researcher at the International Poverty Solutions Collaborative (IPSC) to analyze the qualitative and quantitative data.  This data will be aggregated and sent to future donors.

David

Time is flying!  Right now I feel as if my project is getting larger instead of smaller as time goes on!  Kathy and I have been working so hard in the past two weeks to actually start implementing the changes we have been researching and organizing.  Here is an update on my projects!

Sustainability

Mike from Litech Lighting is coming in today to do an energy audit of the whole church.  We had originally just done an audit of the Food Pantry’s wing, but AEP did not accept the application because we were on the church’s account and not our own (a minor technicality, to say the least).  While I first viewed this as a HUGE setback (the energy savings from the audit would have funded many of my suggested environmental changes), it is now better than I had originally hoped.  I realized that our application being denied opened the doors for the entire church to save energy, instead of just our little corner.  This will be a huge step forward in terms of saving money for the church but also becoming more sustainable and responsible as a whole.

We have also put out our first two sets of recycling bins!  While Kathy and I are still deciding on which company to go with for our recycling, we decided it would be best to go ahead and start collecting!  The bins have been well-received so far, but it will take some training to educate people on what types of materials are recyclable and which aren’t.  It is quite simply amazing and somewhat frightening as to how little the general public knows about recycling.  This should be something every person is educated on, as it saves so much money and resources for our community.  In addition to our recycling bins, Kathy and I also bought a free-standing water cooler for the Food Pantry volunteers.  The Food Pantry spends approximately $240.00 per year on plastic water bottles!  Not only will our water cooler cut that cost, it will also reduce the waste our Pantry generates.

A very exciting turn in my plan is food waste recycling.  We are starting a trial period with Eartha Limited to collect food waste, which in turn is recycled into compost and biofuels.  We have estimated the cost of garbage collection will but cut by AT LEAST a third (and possibly much more) by our food waste and recyclable material collection.  We have calculated that the savings we accrue from less garbage collection will pay for our new recycling costs, and still generate savings for the church after cost.  How amazing is this???  Not only are we becoming more responsible stewards of our environment, but we are saving money doing it.  It can’t get much better than that!

Here is a link to a video that features both our Food Pantry and Eartha Limited!

Volunteering

Kathy and I are revitalizing the volunteer training manuals to incorporate what was asked for in our volunteer surveys, and also to train volunteers in the environmental changes taking place.  Many of our volunteers requested additional training through their surveys so they can better serve the needs of our community.  We have three training sessions planned, starting this Saturday!  Kathy and I will give presentations to the volunteers on topics including environmental changes, our new scheduling system (hopefully VolunteerHub), new “uniforms” (nametags and aprons), and how to best help our clients in general.  These training sessions will be the first time I really get to interact with the volunteers, which will be very rewarding.

Transportation

Last but not least, the problem that has eluded me so far this summer.  Our client surveys have shown that only 36% of families that come through our pantry own a car.  In comparison to the average 89% of American families that own a car, the disparity in these percentages is enormous.  Further, 50% of our clients sometimes or always have a hard time finding transportation to our pantry.  These statistics show our Food Pantry has a problem, and a large one at that.  How do we solve this issue for such a large percentage of the population?  I still don’t have an answer, but we’re getting there.  We decided to host a meeting of Food Pantry managers to discuss this issue.  My hope with this meeting is the “two heads are better than one” philosophy (or 5 or 10 heads!).  I am certain the transportation issue is not one single to our pantry, but is a problem for every pantry.  If we can come together to find common solutions, maybe we can work together to implement them and then better serve our community as a whole.  I am hopeful this meeting will bring the area food pantries closer together and will strengthen our relationships with each other.

Sorry for the long post!  I have a feeling next week’s will be even longer!!!  🙂

Last week was the second week of the Heritage Concert Series, and the Kids Gallery raised (drum-roll, please…) $67! It was storming during the festival so we moved indoors, which actually helped our sales quite a bit as we had more customers walking through despite the less attractive booth set-up. The goal for next week, set by the 7 and 8 year olds is $70, and I think we can do it!

The big seller this week was bracelets!

The dance camp is going strong this week, and the kids have a performance coming up so I anticipate a crazy schedule.  Luckily we are finished with all of the small individual projects, so now I can be flexible only working with a few students at a time on some bigger items. Last week, we started making a turtle table with paper mache, and will hopefully have it finished by Thursday!

I think the biggest thing I have learned in the past few weeks is how to have a better balance between accomplishing class activities but catering to individual needs.  On one hand, there are so many individual talents that I want the students to be able to freely express; we have lyric writers, poets, comic book artists, graffiti artists, drawers, and students who like to do “girly” crafts. On the other hand, we have students who haven’t developed much interest in the arts or found their niche or interest. Last week I was able to approach some of the students about putting their individual talents to use and doing some research and projects on the side that they can contribute, and they seemed to be excited about that. Some of the students who have shown little interest in the visual arts this summer are also getting excited about some of our bigger, messier projects.  I was certainly thrilled to see children taking an interest in learning both inside and outside of the camp.

Thirdly, there is the issue of financial literacy. I feel I am in the very beginning stages of understanding what the kids understand. The 7-8 year-olds had a pretty successful lesson last week, discussing all of the options for what you can do with your money, and what it looks like to set smart savings goals. The lesson with the 9-10 year-olds was quite a big leap though. My first mistake was walking into the room and saying (as enthusiastically as possible) “We are going to learn how to fill out budget sheets today!” You can only imagine a 9 year old’s response to that one! I had half the class tuned out before I even began.  This week I think we are going to take a few steps back and go a little more basic, and I am going to brainstorm ways to make the activities more interesting.

Hope you get a chance to stop by the Heritage Concert Series!
Jamie

As I continue my evaluation research with three additional site visits this past week, I have been thinking about how I will later frame all of this information in a convincing and compelling way to justify the funding of AmeriCorps VISTA Summer Associates. I happened to just finish the book Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath, which explains why some ideas persist throughout time, while others aren’t remembered after 10 minutes. Hoping to be bring this core idea of future funding for Summer Associates to the attention of key stakeholders and to stick, I’m trying my best to keep these tips in mind as I begin to analyze and write about the data that I am collecting. Getting an idea to stick and last the audience must: pay attention, understand and remember, agree or believe, care, and be able to act on it. A large majority of the book is spent explaining how to do exactly do all of that, and is explained through the acronym SUCCESs.

SUCCESs

1. Simple: Find the core of an idea and make that most important. People remember simple, they don’t necessarily remember details.
2. Unexpected: Get attention the attention of the audience; create a sense of surprise and hold attention by creating interest in the idea.
3. Concrete: Help people understand and remember the idea by framing an intangible or ambiguous concept into a concrete example,
4. Credible: Help people believe by showing credibility of source. Using an anti authority, qualifying with details and statistics, and having an extraordinary example.
5. Emotional: Make people care. Tapping into existing emotion (using associations), fighting semantic stretch (the change of word connotation or meaning with over-use), appealing to self-interest, and appealing to identity are a few ways to add the emotional component to presenting an idea.
6. Stories: Get people to act; “a story is powerful because it provides the context missing from abstract prose.” We want an un-passive audience.

Beyond that, the book also focuses on the ‘Curse of Knowledge’, which is knowing things that others don’t know, and not remembering what it’s like not to know those things. It’s a curse because you are not able to explain the idea clearly in a way that those who don’t know will understand, and from the beginning the Curse of Knowledge causes an idea to fizzle out quicker than birthday candles at a 6th birthday party; no one would be able to even understand what you are talking about!

While my little synopsis does not do the book and concepts therein justice, I do think that for my project it will be very useful as I will need to frame my information, ideas, and suggestions in such a way that the audience will be able to understand, remember, and most importantly want to act. I’ll need to really hone in on the emotional realm of an idea, and pull on the stakeholders’ heart strings. Also creating a story by putting my information into a narrative form that really focuses on individual experiences will greatly help with encouraging action. The book quotes Mother Theresa, who said, “If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.”  I will want to keep that in mind and really show how each Summer Associate impacts the operations of the Summer Feeding Program that it serves and, hopefully this will add the emotional component that will cause action.

I hope everyone has a good week!

Melissa

It has been a long time since a blog post for me–I’m sorry!  For the past 3 weeks we have been working on our biannual event at AIDS Resource Center Ohio, Art for Life, and it has been insane.  We are drowning in pieces of art at our warehouse and office.  It is also really cool :)!

Since I’ve come on board at ARC Ohio, I have cold called artists, tracked down a few of my own, managed an auction submission data base, arranged art, and taken so many pictures.  I have also seen the future layout of our event at the Columbus Museum of Art–it is going to be a beautiful evening! Overall, it has been a lot of fun!  I have never been a huge visual arts person (music has been where my strengths lie), but  I have grown to appreciate the process of creating a piece of art and, of course, the final product.  It has also been really awesome to match names to faces and titles to pieces after looking at spreadsheets and databases for so long.

This Friday we will be having our jury select what pieces will go to the live and silent auction; so after weeks of gathering art we will finally known which will be in the event.  It is a really great feeling to see an event come together that I have been a part of.

Below I have the link to our event page.  I think it will draw art lovers; supports of AIDS prevention, advocacy, and care; and those who are active in their Columbus community.  More or less, any and all are welcome and it is definitely an event to check out and track!

artforlifecolumbus.org

–Katie