Columbus Foundation Fellowship Programs

It is now my seventh week at We Amplify Voices, and I am going to share seven takeaways I have had so far working at a nonprofit. I have had the opportunity to work with different staff members and on different projects, and I have been able to learn a lot about the nonprofit space while I am here. 7 Takeaways from Week 7: 

1. Everyone wears a lot of different hats

This is a direct quote from one of my coworkers when I was asking her about her career path in nonprofit. She really emphasized that throughout her career she had many different roles at the organizations she has been a part of, and that was partly how she learned so much at her different jobs. 

2. Collaborative atmosphere

I see all the WAV staff always in constant collaboration with one another. WAV is a smaller nonprofit in the number of full-time staff, but everyone is always very involved and at least up to date on what everyone else is doing. I learn a lot just by being involved in their weekly team meetings. 

3. Collaboration with other organizations

One of my favorite things I have noticed is how involved WAV is with the community as a whole. In my nonprofit classes at Ohio State, I learned a lot about the importance of nonprofit collaboration, and I see that firsthand at WAV. Whether they are collaborating with other groups for programs and grants or just being aware of who else might be interested in our events, WAV is very connected to the Columbus community. 

4. The importance of reporting

It makes a lot of sense to want to measure the impact of programs, but I did not think about that much before starting at WAV. In the planning process for programs and events, we always talk about how we can measure the difference it makes, which is important for the future of the organization. 

5. Organization and infrastructure are needed 

One thing I am able to do at WAV now that they have extra help is to make things a little more organized. The staff has a lot of work to do but that work is made so much easier when there are systems in place. 

6. Career paths are windy

A more personal takeaway I have had is that everyone’s career path always takes unexpected turns. I am graduating next month and looking for jobs, but I am reassured that even though I may not know what exactly my path will be there is so much opportunity out there. 

7. Tying the mission into everything

My last takeaway is how WAV truly ties its mission into everything they do. I know this is expected of nonprofits, but even our daily icebreaker will somehow come back to WAVs mission: to heal communities through creative expression. 

I am excited to see how these thoughts may change or expand as I finish off my internship in the next couple of weeks!

Gosh, these blog titles are getting weirder and weirder by the week. Anyway, I’m going to need you to help me out. I know, I know. It’s supposed to be a nice, relaxing 5 minutes of simple reading, but trust me. Just do it. 

I need you to find the nearest thing around you that remotely resembles a microphone. It could be a popsicle, your phone charger, or the half brown banana that’s been sitting on your kitchen table for a week. Find it? Okay, good. Now pick it up, and read the next paragraph in your best national news anchor voice. 

Good evening folks, from my very cold and very dark basement. As you can see behind me, we have about a 1 foot by 2 foot glass window, where we have been viewing the occasional flash of lightning, and . . BANG, CRACKLE . . . Wow, that was quite a loud clap of thunder in the background. Unfortunately, folks in this area have been experiencing some power outages, your very own [insert your name here] included. Now that I think about it, you probably can’t even see me. Let’s get back to you, Sarah, before the viewers get too tired of my voice without a face attached to it. We forgot the extra generator in the newsroom today. 

*Now would be a good time to wink at your audience*

I had to get creative—I wrote that in my own very cold and very dark basement, a place where inspiration is far and few between. The power had gone out. I killed a gnat on my computer screen. What a time to be alive. (Also, sidenote: the power came back on, I kid you not, probably 2 seconds after I wrote that last sentence. Whatever. It’s prime blog content). 

So, I’m sitting there in the dark, I’m thinking about what to write, I’m thinking about my experiences this week, and, as if on cue with the BOOM of the thunder outside, the idea hit me. I began to take in my surroundings, or maybe more appropriately, lack of them. It was pitch black, except for the bright white of the Google Doc I was writing on. And, for now, we are going to ignore the fact that the power came back on, which prompted me to tell my parents that the creative juices had dried up, and they needed to turn the lights back off, for ingenuity, of course. 

After ruminating in the dark for a few minutes, the first thing that came to mind was a children’s book called In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories retold by Alvin Schwartz, probably because the word “dark” is literally a third of the words in the first story. It goes like this:

In a dark, dark woods

There was a dark, dark house

And in that dark, dark house

There was a dark, dark room

And in that dark, dark room

There was a dark, dark chest

And in that dark, dark chest 

There was dark, dark shelf 

And on that dark, dark shelf 

There was a dark, dark box

And in that dark dark box 

There was . . . 

A ghost!

Growing up, my mom’s brother, my Uncle Dave, would tell another story out of this book from memory, when all the cousins were young and we’d sit around a campfire making s’mores. It was about a girl named Jenny with a green ribbon tied around her neck. Jenny dated and married a boy named Alfred, who always asked Jenny why she never took the ribbon off, but much to his dismay, she never told him. Until, that is, she was on her deathbed, and she finally untied the ribbon, revealing that it was holding her head onto her body. The book ends with a sentence as simple as it is sinister: And Jenny’s head fell off. It seems creepy, I know, but we got a kick out of the fact that not only did Uncle Dave say he knew Jenny, but that she actually lived under the shed in his backyard. 

That was an aside, but back to the dark. The word “dark” can be used in a lot of ways. Sometimes, we mean it in the literal sense of the word, as in the absence of light. Other times, we can use it to mean grim, evil, or sinister. But for now, we’re going to focus on the former. Let’s start with an obvious fact: in the dark, you can’t see. You’re completely devoid of the visual world around you, and in turn, completely reliant on touch, smell, and hearing to navigate your surroundings. Being scared of the dark is also an incredibly common childhood fear, and a fear that actually has prehistoric origins. (How many times have I told you that fear of the unknown will come back around? It really is at the root of everything). However, we’re not totally at the mercy of the dark. Over time, humans have developed adaptations in their cones and rods (the two types of photoreceptors in the human eye) to allow for a simplistic version of night vision. I won’t get into the details, but click here if you want to learn more. Generally though, trying to complete our daily tasks of living in the darkness would not be ideal. We’ll get back to the dark in a second, but first, we need to talk kids. 

This week, I spent my first full day with the kids in Residential, the part of SVFS that houses children in the custody of the county that are also in need of mental health services. I couldn’t decide how I felt about the whole thing, and I wavered a lot. I knew the kids were in a good place, and I felt grateful that they were surrounded by people who truly cared about them. The other side to this, though, was that they were even at SVFS in the first place. Every time I looked at them, I couldn’t help but imagine what kind of circumstances could have brought them here. I thought about their families, too, and I’m not all that foreign to situations like these. My family adopted my two sisters, both of whom were born into families that couldn’t care for them, but who made the incredibly brave and difficult decision to place them for adoption. It’s not the same situation, I know that. But, it is similar in the fact that these children are no longer living with the family they were born into, and that’s emotional, and complicated, and difficult. But something else struck me about these kids. They were happy. I think I kind of forgot that they were still kids, and they found joy in things like painting, and legos, and four square, and sitting in a circle listening to someone read them a story. 

One little boy in particular caught my attention. He had the biggest smile, the kind that takes up a person’s whole face and brings out the light in their eyes. I’d met him about 3 weeks ago when I spent a few hours in Residential for the first time, and from then on, I was greeted with a “MS. SARAHHHHH!” and a hug every time I saw him in the hallway. I finally spent about an hour with his class on Thursday building towers out of marshmallows and dry spaghetti noodles, and again, I had an interaction with him that stuck with me. After every kid had built their towers, they were instructed to place a book on top of it to see if the tower was strong enough to hold it up. “Do you think it’s gonna work?” I asked him, to which he replied, “I don’t know Ms. Sarah, but I believe in my tower, and I believe in myself!” I couldn’t help but think to myself how unbelievable his attitude was, considering he’d been at the facility quite a bit longer than the other kids. As I was getting ready to leave his class, he asked if he could give me a really, super, enormous hug. “Of course!” I said, which resulted in him standing at the opposite end of the classroom to get a running start. He jumped into my arms and squeezed me so tight I had to put him down. Best. Hug. Ever. 

I think that living in residential care as a child would be somewhat like navigating life in the dark. You can’t really see where you’re headed, and every step you take requires thought and consideration, because you don’t have anyone lighting the path you should be taking. You’re living your life blindly, and without a fully developed brain. And children living in residential care are much more likely to carry a psychiatric diagnosis. But, our psyche has adaptations to metaphorical darkness, just like the human eye does in a physical sense. Children can be incredibly resilient, as long as they are supported with trustworthy, interpersonal adult relationships and a goal-oriented future focus approach to care, both of which SVFS aims to provide. 

So, don’t worry. No one’s head is falling off, and no one is stuck in a dark, dark house, in a dark, dark room (except for me, last night, when I wrote the first few paragraphs of this blog entry). I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’d like to think the kids will be okay. Of course, no one can predict what they’ll experience when they leave SVFS, and I can’t say for certain that this will be true for all of them—that’s just reality. What I do know for sure, though, is that I love those kids, and I hope they know it. 

This week has been a myriad of starting and finishing different aspects of my project. Tomorrow, I close the book on my marketing plan. I’ve dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s and even am running it through Canva to make sure the final draft looks nice. Today I closed the book on the engagement plan portion of the project. For the last few weeks, I’ve been meeting with different staff that work with different stakeholders involved with JFS – donors, volunteers, program partners, and their new business services program. It was then my job to create a sort of calendar, or multi-point plan, of different actions JFS staff should take to make sure these stakeholders get a good introduction to the organization. The better the welcome, the more likely they are to stay. I took a marketing class in high school and we learned that its 7x cheaper to try and retain your customers than get new ones. I’m sure nonprofit organizations play by similar rules. These engagement plans should help with that.

Today also marked the beginning of the last part of my project. Throughout the month of August, I’ll be helping JFS conduct a social media “thank you” campaign to spotlight all the different ways people contribute to the organization. I met with the Marketing and Communications Director, the Resource Development Director, and the Special Projects Manager. I do better when I have clear expectations and deadlines, so I called the meeting in order to discuss what we wanted the campaign to look like and put together next steps. I’m leading the campaign, which is exciting, and now after this meeting I’m ready to get the ball rolling. August 1, we hit the ground running.

My favorite part about JFS is how the answer is almost alway “yes.” I’ve been able to take on passion projects on top of my regularly assigned work. The Google Ad Grants continue to be in development, and I’m working on putting together two, maybe three, campaigns to support different JFS services’ outreach efforts. If all goes well, I’ll be designing one for the Business Services Membership Program, the Life and Legacy program, as well as one for JFS’ workshops and trainings for job seekers.

Tomorrow I’m meeting with the coordinator of the Business Service Membership Program and we’re going to talk about Google Ad Grants with the goal of getting a campaign off the ground as soon as possible. We’re also going to talk about me getting to try my hand at working with MailChimp. This is another software I want to gain experience working with, and when I asked about it, the answer was “yes.”

I may also get to continue creating marketing materials. For the Business Services program, I helped put together an onboarding/welcoming toolkit in Canva. This was shared with two other staffers who run job seeker workshops and trainings. They indicated they’d like me to make something for them, too, which I’d love to be able to do. All in all, when I’m not working on my project, it’s a bit like choose your own adventure – I’m loving every step of the way.

This past week was the last week of summer reading for the kids, and it was so bittersweet. Actually, it was mostly sweet and sticky – we had an ice cream to celebrate and it was so fun and chaotic! It was a great to get all of the kids and many of their parents together in one place to celebrate their participation in and, in some cases, dedication to the reading program. The kids were so excited for the ice cream and we got to give out some gift cards and prizes to some of the most dedicated kids. While I will miss seeing the kids everyday, I am glad to have a break from being the line monitor, check-in master, and behavior supervisor! Being in charge of a bunch of kids everyday can be incredibly challenging to your sanity and patience, but it is also so rewarding to see all the smiles and to know you were a part of making that happen. I look forward to planning a couple of fun nights for the kids to come hang out and make crafts or play soccer!

Last week, I also had a preliminary meeting to discuss a grant we are moving forward with. It is cool to see the work and thought process that goes into even the first steps of applying for a grant. I enjoyed the process of talking through how we fit into the mission of the grant, brainstorming ways to apply the funding, and troubleshooting the roadblocks that are certain to come up. I look forward to learning more about this process as we move forward with the application process.

Tonight is our volunteer appreciation dinner, and I already know its going to be a big, fun party. Our incredible volunteers contribute so much to helping the organization out in various ways and we truly could not do it without them. There are so many selfless, fun, compassionate individuals that help us out and I am looking forward to celebrating them and showing our appreciation at tonight’s dinner. They deserve a huge round of applause!

Last week was a blur. I spent days at home in Zoom meetings and I spent days at COHatch in meetings. I spent hours at Columbus Foundation attending a lesson and I’ve spent hours in our tree nursery tending to our trees.

One of our meetings was with two police officers. They taught us about an act called Community Emerging that each police officer partakes in. They have to pick a community and find some way that they can add value to that community. These two officers chose Fairlane mobile park. Behind the mobile homes is a homeless camp that holds anywhere between a100-200 people. The officers at first were trying to help the homeless camp when they realized the people in the mobile homes were neglected because everyone focuses on the problem behind them. Their goal is to create more separation between the homes and the people in the camp, reduce foot traffic, and keep the mobile park clean. They asked us to help. The idea is to have more trees to separate the two or help start a community garden for the mobile park. The officers are putting together an event on August 12 called Focus On Fairlane as a start of their project and to meet some of their short term goals.

A meeting I was in the day before was with a lady who puts together pop-up thrift stores or clothing exchanging events to reduce waste. We are trying to put together a Green Drinks event with her. Both of these meetings were very informative and very different from each other, yet they each wanted Green Columbus’s help. Green Columbus is more than just trees, it’s more than just plants. Green Columbus is a community builder, it brings people together. It improves the tree canopy and gives people free trees as a bonus. Each week I realize more and more how lucky I am to be a part of this organization. Not everything is what it appears to be at first glance.

This week I have been working a lot on our Life Stories event at the Gateway Film Center, and I want to use this blog post to talk about the details of the project. The Life Stories project features two groups of women serving life or long sentences at the Ohio Reformatory for Women: the storytellers who speak on their journeys and the media crew who capture the intimate stories of their incarcerated sisters. The purpose of this showing is to help promote understanding and connection between the general population and the often misunderstood world incarcerated people live in. 

The actual content of the project took place before I arrived at WAV, so my role has been working on a marketing and communications plan for this premiere event, where we are collaborating with an arts administration group from Otterbein University. One of the best parts about this project for me has been all the people involved that I get to work with. The Otterbein group and WAV staff meet weekly to plan the event itself, and this week I also got to meet with a former WAV staff member to talk about our communication plan. At this meeting, we began discussing how this event ties into WAVs goals as a whole, and it really got me thinking more about the big picture.

On the call, we found one common thread between all WAVs workshops and programs, which was that they are a way to create safe spaces for people, no matter the population. I saw this firsthand with the kids at the summer program, and it was also incredibly relevant for the incarcerated women involved in the Life Stories documentary. Beyond thinking about the big picture of WAV, I was also inspired to think about the big picture of what I want to do in my career, and it came back to those safe spaces. Every organization I have been a part of, whether it has been my scholars group at Ohio State, my job at the information desk, or the positions at nonprofit internships I have held, I have always wanted to contribute to creating a positive space for the people around me. At WAV this is a key part of their mission, but no matter where I go next I want to make that a priority for me.

It was another week filled with preparations for upcoming camps at the Ohio Craft Museum. While it makes for a busy week, it does not create the most engaging content for a blog post!

With this in mind, I decided to try a new approach to my weekly blog post.  I sat down with Judi Young, the new Education Coordinator for the Ohio Craft Museum, and asked her a few questions about herself and her hopes and goals for the museum. 

ART BACKGROUND

Judi is an artist who creates whimsical collages which have been featured in stores and exhibits around Columbus. She was first inspired to create her collages when she saw a piece of art in a store that captured her eye. It was a print of a torn paper collage that looked like a rooster. Enthralled by the work, Judi began collecting materials such as scrapbook paper and wrapping paper to make her own collages. Judi has completed multiple artist-in-residency programs and has been making her own animal-focused art since 2004. She has been an educator since 2006. 

ART EDUCATION: WHY & WHAT’S NEXT

When asked why she thinks art instruction and/or experiences are important for children, Judi expressed her belief that it is important for children to have artistic experiences because it facilitates the development of a well-rounded person by reinforcing individual creativity as well as divergent thinking skills. 

As the new education coordinator, Judi hopes to integrate lessons about influential Ohio artists, such as Aminah Robinson, into future camp sessions. As a history major and an enthusiastic art hobbyist, I appreciate this approach as it will allow the campers to learn more about art, art history, and the specific history of Ohio artisans, which remains true to the central theme of the museum itself.

I am very thankful for Judi’s willingness and eagerness to sit down with me and talk about her plans for the educational aspects of the museum, as well as her background and inspiration. Judi’s kind guidance and encouragement has been a welcomed addition to the camp, and I look forward to the return of the young camper’s energy next week! 

This week was filled with lots of meetings and lots of planning. As PrimaryOne Health is gearing up for National Healthcare Center Week, ribbon cuttings, and lots of things in between. It has been really exciting to be apart of the planning of the different events that are coming up, and it has been a great insight into how hard the people around me work. There are so many things that need to be done and so much coordination it is really insightful to see how this all flows together. Although, it seems like everything is going against the goals that P1H is trying to achieve, the team comes together to pivot, and get things done. This is a testament to the hard work of those in the non profit sphere. Speaking of the word non profit, in our Fellows Leadership course Dr. Lomax talked about how the shifting of the language around the word non profit can shift the way that people view non profit work. Non profit is a deficit based language, and the history of non profits is based in this deficit language, and the way that society has institutionalized non profits is in a lesser than way. Thats why so much money has been put into non profits but there are no big changes because society is what needs to change and the way that we talk about, and view things needs to be changed as well. Dr. Lomax mentioned that a colleague of his has created the idea of shifting language to social profit which is an asset based vernacular which can illuminate how helping others and coming together can create positive social change. I also had the opportunity to attend the South Side Thrive Collaborative All Network Forum where the topic was affordable housing. I am not particularly versed in affordable housing, and felt like I learned so much. It is an ever growing issue in Columbus and I am not ignited to advocate and educate myself on affordable housing. There were a bunch of great community members and leaders speaking, which was very cool to be able to represent P1H. I left the forum with a page full of notes, and my mind spinning with so many thoughts. It was a great experience and I was so grateful to be able to attend. As always I am pondering my why, and I am critically thinking about the power and power structures within our world. These thoughts can be so big and overwhelming, but if I keep thinking and talking about it, and believe in my ability to make change, change will be made. My desire is to make things better each day and to help those around me. I hope that this will lead me to where I am meant to land.

Ah, the Northern Lights. Aurora Borealis. Merry Dancers. Whatever you want to call them, you’ve probably heard of this beautiful natural phenomenon, or if you’re lucky, you may have even seen them. And, if you’ve been following the news lately, you’d know that they were supposed to have been visible on July 12th and 13th in places that they’re not normally, like North Dakota, Indiana, Idaho, Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and even our own Ohio. And I was not going to miss this. I’m originally from Westfield, Indiana, a fairly large suburb just north of Indianapolis, and I had already been planning to travel there Thursday evening on my way to visit some friends in Michigan over the weekend. So, I made plans with my cousins and high school friends on Wednesday, I arrived in Westfield on Thursday evening, and around 10 p.m., we ventured out in a small, blue, four door sedan to find a place with no light pollution and a quality view of the big, bad Northern Lights. 

Turns out, they weren’t big or bad. Or visible. We actually didn’t see them at all, much to our disappointment. The forecast had changed, and only small parts of the Northernmost states, including Alaska, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Maine, were able to see anything at all. I was frustrated, yes, but you should know me by now. My parents once asked me how I come up with my ideas for the blog, and my answer was actually pretty simple. I sit in front of my computer with my eyes closed, replaying the events of the week in my head until I come across something worth writing about. This week, I had no trouble. I mean, I was practically drooling over the topic: a failed expedition to see one of the oldest and most researched astronomical phenomena in history in a state that’s mostly known for corn and car racing? Yeah, that’s going in the blog. 

If you’ve been following along the past 5 weeks, you’d also know that I like science, specifically flatworms and skunk stink. (This might sound weird, but I promise, it’s applicable. Clink the links to read the previous blogs). But today, we’re moving onto, you guessed it, the Northern Lights. And, unless you’re an astrology fanatic, you probably don’t know much about how the Northern Lights emit their, well, lights. According to the Library of Congress, the first thing you should know about the Northern Lights is that they don’t just happen in the north, and they actually have a different name depending on where on Earth, literally, you’re located. In the northern hemisphere, they’re called aurora borealis, but in the southern hemisphere, they’re called aurora australis. Enough of the boring stuff though—let’s get to the meat and potatoes. How are aurora borealis and aurora australis formed? I have to admit, I had to read up on this, and after a 10 minute Google Search, I’m an expert. (Just kidding, but I do know more than I did 10 minutes ago). In brief, the sun emits billions of charged particles called ions toward the Earth, and as a whole, they’re called solar wind. Most solar wind is blocked from hitting the Earth’s surface by the magnetic field surrounding it, but sometimes, a few ions sneak through, inevitably colliding with the oxygen and nitrogen particles from the atmosphere. And, the energy of this collision brings about what we know to be the Northern Lights. 

And, to no one’s surprise, this got me thinking. Auroras are beautiful. They’re a bucket list item. People are attracted to them, and they’re often a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But I’d bet you money that people don’t know, or don’t care to know, how they’re created. And the kids I work with? Most people probably wouldn’t look at them and think they’ll turn into the next president, or the future director of the CDC, or the next Bill Gates, and they’ve experienced tragedy beyond most peoples’ wildest imaginations. But then again, most people probably don’t think the auroras are made from the profoundly intense and violent bursts of energy that they are. Here’s the catch though: with the right support systems, those kids can turn into great leaders, and that’s why what we’re doing at SVFS is so important. So if you never get to see the Northern Lights, that’s okay. Just remember how they came to be.

This week I’ve continued to work on data entry for media contacts and comic vendors statewide. However, I was also able to pivot towards a new task by helping my supervisor with grant writing. I did this primarily by finding academic research concerning comics, their use as educational tools across age ranges, and their value as literature. This was something which I had been working on periodically throughout my time at CXC, when I was able, but it became my main focus as I was informed of an upcoming grant deadline. Beforehand I had found relatively little academic literature concerning comic books, and nothing which I had considered to be useful, so I was essentially starting fresh with a looming deadline I was previously entirely unaware of.

However, I seem to do some of my best work under the pressure of a set deadline, and it was certainly refreshing to once again work in a way which I so strongly enjoy and am passionate about (albeit, about a topic which I have never worked with before). After searching without success for some time, I found an article which was seemingly perfect for our uses. From there, I was able to comb through references and CV’s, reading many articles, to find sources which I thought would be best used to support arguments about CXC’s value. From there, I organized these sources based on how I thought they should be used, providing summaries and my own notes, creating citations ready for use, and pulling many quotes to be integrated into the grant itself. While I won’t be involved in the actual writing of the grant, my work has certainly provided CXC with the tools to elevate their own grant-writing.

This weekend I will be participating in the Columbus Book Festival, manning the CXC table. I’ll be there both Saturday and Sunday. I hope we’ll have a great weekend!