Columbus Foundation Fellowship Programs

I cannot believe how fast this summer has gone by! It feels like just yesterday I was touring the museum and educational spaces and learning what my responsibilities would be for the camp. I have spent this last week of the program resetting the classrooms, reorganizing the supply room, writing my presentation for the luncheon at The Columbus Foundation, and reflecting on my summer experience. 

I am so thankful for my time with Ohio Designer Craftsmen and The Columbus Foundation. The opportunity to have a positive impact and be a helpful person for an amazing nonprofit has been invaluable. I have learned so much about how to facilitate comfort and learning for kids with all different needs, and how to manage many different elements that all contribute to the successful function of a program. 

I had so much fun, made such incredible connections with the campers and my fellow staff members, and gotten so much joy from this process. I want to thank Judi, the educational coordinator with whom I worked with so much this summer, as well as Kim, the executive director of The Ohio Craft Museum, and Dr. Lomax and The Columbus Foundation for this opportunity, I will always be grateful for all this summer has brought me.  

The past 10 weeks have been full of learning and growth. My first, and longest, job was in the food industry. Coming from 4-6 hour days that started at 5:30 AM and being on my feet all day, to a 9-5 in an office, was an abrupt change. I came to the Columbus Foundation Summer Fellowship ready and eager to gain nonprofit work experience. Before my time here, I had no experience working with nonprofits, and I was excited to get started.

When I got to Jewish Family Services, it was clear they were anticipating my arrival. People came to my desk to introduce themselves and thank me for being there, I was called into offices so I could hear stories from staff about the industry and what brought them to the agency, and overall was encouraged to continue on my path (with many more people now cheering me on).

Many people commented on this phenomenon, and I was no different: from day one, I was put right to work and diving into the agency. I liked this, though. I have said this many times in interviews and in conversations – I want to gain hands-on experience and be a productive and purposeful member of the team. I got to do that at Jewish Family Services.

What I also loved was doing mission driven, community-supportive work. Last fall, I took a class titled “Introduction to Nonprofits” and we talked extensively on what our theories of change were. I wrote about how mine was centered on community empowerment. To me, JFS does something very similar – clients come to the agency and are welcomed as they are. They are given guidance and support to achieve the goals they have for themselves.

Throughout my time this summer, I have grown greatly as a professional. I sharpened my time management, communications, teamwork, and research skills as I built the marketing plan and stakeholder engagement maps. The social media thank-a-thon helped me build skills in content creation and managing social media sites. I know I will take all of these skills with me as I move on to my next endeavor.

I want to thank the Columbus Foundation and Jewish Family Services for this tremendous opportunity. It was an honor to spend the last 10 weeks as a Summer Fellow, and I will cherish the lessons I learned and people I met as I move forward.

The next couple of weeks will be a blessing and a curse. In the seventh week and before I start to make plans for after the fellowship is over, the blessing is I will have a well-deserved break in between gigs. I am also finishing my projects at the organization and plan to return and volunteer after the summer. The curse is finding a permanent job because the department would hold my job. I am so grateful for the experience of being a summer fellow, but the uncertainty after is what gets me. The other factor is I have a few more classes to graduate, so I still need to finish school. Connecting professionally is much more complicated than it seems. Coordinating schedules for events, campaigning for donations, and getting doctor’s offices to respond promptly requires persistence and focus. I would like to say businesses and organizations respond to emails quickly, but that they don’t and sometimes do not respond at all. That has been challenging because part of the job was to recruit volunteers, get organizations or people to participate in activities with us, and to organizations and businesses to partner with us. The business-to-business connections have been extremely difficult because they usually have someone not on-site or unavailable. These are little things that I can help with after the fellowship has technically ended. Overall, I am glad I got this experience and looking forward to seeing what I can do with it. It is not goodbye, it is, I will see you later. Just not every day.

Fear is often the catalyst for social, economic, and societal change. In week six, we discussed why fear was a common motivational factor. For some, it was fear from inequitable traumatic experiences or economic and societal hardships. That particular week the members of a subsidized building were experiencing some of the familiar fears of living in poverty. In this case, many people trying to deal with heat with little assistance were battling property management for safe and healthy housing, including working air conditioning for the building. Low- or fixed-income renters often fear reporting housing issues until it is dire because of perceived or common retaliation in the form of losing their housing and maintenance charges for general building upkeep they cannot afford. This week one of the members had been without working air conditioning in the unit for several weeks, and the many requests to fix the problem led to no resolution. After several weeks and the problem is not set, her refrigerator stops working properly and finally stops working. I did not tell you that she has chronic health issues and anxiety, and her three grandchildren are there with her during the day while their mom is at work. Low-income properties are known for not maintaining them, leaving the residents in insufferable positions with few options. At Home By High did their best to advocate for the urgentness of the repairs and help with basic needs by providing fans and some food over the weekend until the refrigerator could be fixed. But the problem needed to be fixed permanently, not just putting a band-aid on it. The air conditioning unit is still broken, and they said we could help her with a reasonable accommodation request from a doctor to get a window air conditioning unit for the small apartment, or she could buy one. The other thing I did not say was that she was just one of many residents in this senior housing property without air conditioning, often suffering in silence after requests for help have been ignored or forgotten about. Nonprofits like AHBH often advocate for their members that experience hardship or unfair treatment, fearfully trying to hold on to their housing, fundamental human rights, and ability to maintain their family. This often means marginalized people are threatened with losing basic needs like housing, food, and health when standing up for themselves. So, it is easier to let minor issues go until they become significant for housing, health, and stability. AHBH tries its best by advocating for members that have been neglected, assisting them with the right paperwork to get accommodations met, as well as just going directly to the other agencies themselves to get resources to help the members, in this case, pantry boxes and box fans for any member that needs them. If society cared for all its members equally, nonprofits would not need to exist to help community members like the invisible aging population because of fear of housing, food, health stability, and traumatic experiences from inequalities.

This past week and a half I have really come to understand what people mean when they say you wear different hats when you do nonprofit work. It was the second week of our Summer Literacy camp, but the first week I was not around for half of the time. While I was gone, my supervisors and other employees at the office were taking care of any tasks related to the camp that I would have normally done. When I got back at the beginning of this week, I picked up those tasks and learned so much. The main responsibility I had was putting together lunches for the kids. If you had asked me at the beginning of the fellowship what I thought I would be doing, making lunch would not have been something I included on that list! Nonetheless, I did it, and had a pretty decent system going by the end of the week despite the challenges. I certainly appreciated my coworkers and supervisors so much more for being able to pick up the slack while I was away. While I think it can be difficult in nonprofit to have so many different people working on a single project, it is also incredibly beneficial. On one hand, this means that there are different work, communication, and problem solving styles that have to amalgamate into one. On the other hand, it is great to have fresh eyes and different perspectives when a project does need to get done. I really appreciated being able to talk to everyone in the office that had a hand in helping with the camp and hearing their experiences. The kids had such a good time and learned so much – we are hoping to continue hosting literacy camps in some capacity to help the kids as they go back to school or enter for the first time.

This past week, I was also able to help create our newsletter. This includes gathering information and photos, writing stories, and transferring everything into a Bloomerang template to send out to our subscribers. I am getting to learn new software and exercise a little bit of creativity too! In this newsletter, we are featuring a story about a women’s group one of our employees, Hamida, started. It was wonderful to get to talk to her and learn more about the group, why she started it, who the women are that attend, and what has come out of the group. I love learning about the various ways community grows at and in the surrounding neighborhood of the RIC.

One more week to go I ended my week with reflection on all I had learned, and the excitement of what I have been able to experience. I really enjoyed listening to our speaker during out fellows leadership meeting. It was refreshing hearing about another fellow’s experience and how she has has used her experience to create a life for herself. In this stage in my life it is so hard to know where exactly I am going to land but it hearing from other people who have been through similar things it makes me feel a little less anxious about the future. I am not sure if I am going to land in the non profit or the for profit sector but I aspire to have a job that contributes to the common good. If I cant find that in my job then I will find ways to do so in my time outside of my career. But my ultimate goal is to find a merger between the two. The people I have talked to at PrimaryOne Health have made multiple comments about how they tried for profit work and they always found their way back to the nonprofit sphere. I do not know where I am going to land, but I do know that I will take all that I have learned and all that I have gotten to be apart during my 10 weeks, and will use it as I continue my career journey. One final week filled with lots of events and bitter sweet endings.

Week 9 at Jewish Family Services was more of the same last week. With the Business Services campaigns launched and the email campaign sent out, it was time to direct my focus to next week. We’ll be thanking volunteers that have greatly helped JFS carry out its mission and programs. I spent a lot of time going through JFS’ Sharepoint to find good photos to post. That was fun – it was nice to see lots of familiar faces in photos that are one, two, or even three years old.

This is something I’ve noticed at JFS. There’s a lot of discussion about employee burnout at nonprofits, and what happens when we try to compensate monetary shortcomings with “fulfilling” jobs. Of course, JFS is not immune, but I can see they try to do right by their employees. And its clear that many staff agree and are content to stay where they are. Many have been at JFS for years, or have changed to other jobs only to come right back. Something I’ve also picked up is that previous JFS clients come back to work for JFS and create those positive cycles.

While my project for JFS moves full speed ahead, my Google Ad Grant campaign has stalled. I’ve gotten the language together, gotten necessary approval, compiled my keywords, and was ready to launch. However, I’m hitting a snare with billing. Everything on their website states that nonprofits should not provide billing information since the Grant covers the cost, and yet I’m unable to move on. I went to get help and ended up resubmitting my request approximately 10 times. It was perfect timing when the other JFS intern and two staff members came by my desk to take me to lunch. Thankfully, when we returned, I was able to finally file a request. Next week I’m going to follow up with Google since I haven’t heard anything. I think this campaign has a lot of promise and can do a lot of good, and I’m committed to getting it off the ground before I’m gone.

This week we also had an all staff meeting, which was interesting. I always enjoy learning more about the organization, and currently they’re on a rising tide of success. The resettlement program is going very well and they’ve been able to welcome over 100 people in a little over 100 days to the Columbus region. I also got to meet another Board member. She shared her journey and what brought her to JFS, and I was reminded how many ways we can dedicate ourselves to being of service to causes we believe in.

During this week’s learning session a guest speaker and previous summer fellow through the Columbus Foundation spoke about her time during the program and her journey into the beginning of her career. Of her discussion, the most significant and noteworthy conversations revolves around priorities and goals in careers.

This topic has been critical in my deliberations and considerations about my career: what is important to me? I know without a reasonable doubt that I want to contribute towards the building up and improvement of communities and people’s lives, but I’m not exactly sure how much I should give up in order to achieve that. From the inverse perspective, a higher wage that involves soul-crushing work isn’t ideal for me either.

Working at a non-profit has shown me that a middle ground does exist. Rewarding and impactful work doesn’t have to exist purely at the detriment to my professional or financial well-being, which has been encouraging.

To zoom back in to the present and my duties at Equitas, I spent this last week searching for potential donors for the event that I attended the recording session for. I was tasked with finding local (Dayton) organizations, companies, and groups that share Equitas Health’s mission statement. I was able to do this by looking at events hosted by groups that Equitas may already be associated with or serve as community-oriented institutions, and then look into the groups that sponsored those events. I was surprised to see the number of groups that helped fund these events and I was doubly surprised to see the variation in industry and differences in products/services they provide. It was definitely interesting and there were groups that I wouldn’t suspect donate or sponsor that made the list.

As this summer comes to a close I am trying to set my intentions to meaningful reflection in my experiences and use them for career and industry decision making. Additionally I am trying to consider what I will include in my wrap-up presentation. The finish line is in sight!

I wanted to start this blog post with a quote, so I Googled, “Funny quotes about endings.” That didn’t really produce the result I was looking for though, so then I Googled, “Funny quotes from TV shows.” Jackpot. Say what you will about The Office, but Michael Scott as Regional Manager at Dunder Mifflin seems to be drawing some suspicious parallels to Sarah Weglarz as Summer Intern at SVFS. Just take a look at these quotes from Michael himself: 

“Sometimes I’ll start a sentence, and I don’t even know where it’s going. I just hope I find it along the way.” I felt like this. All. The. Time. I actually don’t think I practiced a single presentation before I led an activity the entire summer. I just hoped I figured it out along the way, and usually, I did. (Except for the very first activity I wrote about in my fifth blog. Read it and weep. For me. Because my first activity failed miserably). 

“And I knew exactly what to do, but in a much more real sense I had no idea what to do.” Another very applicable one. Experience is the best and only teacher for this job. After reflecting back on this summer, I don’t think it would have mattered whether I had a Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Ph.D. All the schooling in the world couldn’t teach you how to have enough patience to say, “Friends, Ms. Sarah is NOT going to tell you again. We do not eat the water balloons.” 

“Tell him to call me ASAP as possible.” I think I probably said something like this to my boss every day (sorry Sara). Sometimes trying to figure out who I needed to email to find supplies, or how to make a master schedule, or what times everyone had therapy was even more complicated than being in the classroom with the kids. 

“I guess the attitude that I’ve tried to create here is that I’m a friend first and a boss second and probably an entertainer third.” I can say with certainty that anyone who works at Saint Vincent wears more than one hat. One moment, you could be talking about favorite foods, the next minute you’ll be telling someone not to swallow the paper towel they just put in their mouth, and a few minutes after that, you’ll probably be raising the roof to Animals by Maroon 5. 

“They say on your deathbed you never wish you spent more time at the office — but I will.” This one is true. I’m really going to miss this place, and the fact that I was hesitant about applying for this internship at all sounds ridiculous now. The kids and staff make SVFS something special, so here are some people who’ve left their mark on me this summer:

The Hugger: I’ve written about this kid before, but he’s been so impactful to me that it would only be right to include him in the list. He’s in residential care at the moment; he gives the best hugs that always begin with a running start, and he has the biggest, brightest, most authentic smile. He’s so full of life, and he’s funny. He told me a story today about how his room smelled a little stinky when he got up this morning, but instead of just telling me that, he said, “Ms. Sarah, I walked in that room, and OH LORD JESUS, it stank to high heavens!” Then he proceeded to “faint.” He’s taught me that joy can be brought to folks in the simple things, like hugs, smiles, and dramatizing a stinky room. 

The Dancer: This kid is from Prep Academy, on the school side. I spent quite a bit of time with his class, especially in June when I was learning the ropes, partly because I got along well with his teacher, but also because I just enjoyed the kids. The first time I met him, he was dancing. And I mean really dancing, to this song. Bust a move, little buddy. I’m pretty sure he’ll end up on Broadway one day. Other noteworthy interactions include: putting my hair in a (surprisingly) good looking messy bun, saying “Of course you can, Ms. Sarah!” every time I asked if I could use his project as an example, covering, and I mean covering, the birdhouse he painted with 5 different bottles of glitter, and last, but certainly not least, these words: “I love you, Ms. Sarah!” I’d say he’s taught me the importance of being true to yourself. A little cliche, maybe, but something most people have yet to learn.

The Giggler: This little girl’s giggle was filled with pure joie de vivre. Her nose would scrunch up, and it would slide her glasses a little bit further down her face than she wanted them to be. And she giggled at everything. She’d always tell me I was being Silly Ms. Sarah, even when I was saying things like Shhhhh, or Shhhhh, or even Shhhhh. (I said that a lot in her class). One day though, she shared with me an experience she’d had, and I asked her how she felt about it, to which she replied, “It makes me feel sad, and sometimes I cry about it. But that’s okay. Everybody has to cry sometimes.” She’s taught me that even the gigglers of the world cry about things, but that’s just what makes us human, I guess.

The Second (Unexpected) Hugger: This kid was in the same class as the dancer, and to be honest, he was a tough nut to crack. He had trouble focusing, and he wasn’t one for hugs or help or even high fives—I just never really felt confident that I had reached him. As I was walking to my office this morning though, I happened to see him in the hallway, and he asked if I was coming to his class. I told him, “Yeah, I actually am!” to which he replied, “YAY!” and gave me a quick but intentional side hug. I was shocked, and I actually stood in the hallway for a few seconds to collect myself. I had never seen this kid show any kind of physical affection to anyone, ever. Yet here he was, giving me a hug. So, I think he’s taught me that even the people we think are unreachable are actually pretty reachable if we just keep showing up for them. 

The Friend: The kids at Saint Vincent are special, but so are the staff. Mr. Ray is a behavior specialist, and the first thing that struck me about him was his positivity. It seemed to emit from him, almost like radiation from the sun. I’ve walked past Mr. Ray a lot this summer, but never without a high five, a hug, or a “MS. SA-SA-SA-SA-SARAHHH!” 

Another thing you should know about Mr. Ray is that he knows everyone, even though he mostly floats between just two classrooms. And, not only does he know everyone, but he introduces me to everyone too. Being 1) an intern and 2) only around for the summer sometimes made it challenging to feel like a real part of the team, but Mr. Ray has a way of bringing people together. 

I’ve had a lot of memorable moments with Mr. Ray, but this one is probably my favorite. I was walking from my office to the residential part of the building, on a mission to find a working printer and a toilet that wasn’t clogged, which required me to scurry past the gym doors. Mr. Ray, if you’re reading this, I hate to break it to you, but I heard you guys in there and I was trying to sneak past. Anyway, as I was walking, I heard a voice shout, “Ms. Sarah?” So, begrudgingly, I backed up, to find Mr. Ray and a few other staff members playing pickup basketball. Here’s how the rest of the conversation went:

“You got a jump shot Ms. Sarah?”

“Um, not really. The extent of my basketball skills is 4th grade church league. So, I’m not really sure how good that makes me.”

“C’mon, just shoot one!”

I proceeded to totally airball. Like, not even close. I shot again, and at least that time it hit the backboard, but the real point of the story is that my morning started with some bad basketball and a good laugh. Sometimes, I can get bogged down in the pressure of succeeding, but Mr. Ray reminds me that it’s okay to pause, airball, and laugh at yourself every once and a while. 

The Boss: Big, scary, intimidating Sara. Uh, no, I’m kidding. Sara is probably one of my favorite people ever, and not at all intimidating. (Except I was telling her the other day that I was scared of her during my interview). She’s been my sounding board, my stress reliever, my getter doner of things I couldn’t, my answerer of questions (of which there were many), and so much more. Sara, I couldn’t have gotten through the summer without you. The office was cozy with all those boxes, and either the Sahara desert or the Arctic tundra with no in between, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. (Except maybe the fan could have been on a consistent happy medium). 

The point is, I’ve grown to love this place and these people. To quote Michale Scott again, “‘You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take’ – Wayne Gretzky.” And I’m so glad I took this one.

It’s hard to believe how fast this summer has gone by! It is the last week of the Young Master’s summer camp, and I am going to miss the infectious energy of the young campers, especially the sound of them all laughing and talking as they work together on their projects. This week has seen the return of many campers from previous weeks, and it is so sweet to see how the returning campers get so excited to see their friends from other camp weeks.

This week’s theme was RecyclArt, so every project was inspired by the central idea of reusing materials for our art. One of the projects the campers did this week was decorating water bottles to look like bugs or other animals using paint, string, and pipe cleaners. Another one of the projects was making “paint brush people,” sculpting features from clay and adding details with paint and buttons. Far and away the camper’s favorite project this week was making glove monsters. Each camper was given a winter glove, and they decorated the gloves with googly eyes and felt and fabric paint to fashion their unique little monsters.

Tina, the new educational coordinator, has implemented several new practices for the camp that have had a positive impact on the running of the camp. She wanted all of the campers to be able to collectively work on a big project throughout the week that they can show their parents at the art show and then use the project as decoration for the educational spaces of the museum. Last week the campers each decorated little squares of paper with outer space-related images, and this week, the collaborative nature of the project remains. Repurposing a dry-erase board with blue and silver spray paint, Judi had the idea to have the campers each draw a design for a fish, then transferred one of the designs to the large board, and now the campers are all working together to decorate the fish with repurposed beads, foam shapes, and bottle caps. It has been so fun watching them work together selecting the perfect materials for the decoration, and helping each other use the hot glue guns to attach the chosen items to the board. The campers loved showing their families the collaborative project during the art show, and the piece now serves as decoration for the museum’s educational space!

The art show at the end of the week remains my favorite part of kids’ camp. I love watching the campers excitedly show their families and friends the products of their hard work. I am so thankful for all that I have learned throughout this camp and am excited for all that is planned next week, but sad that the fellowship is coming to a close.