Columbus Foundation Fellowship Programs

Tuesday, I met with the One ID collation which is a great group trying to create a municipal ID that can be used as a form of government ID, as well as it being a library card and tied to COTA. Wednesday, I went into the office to get brochures for our legal clinic to disrupt around Columbus as well as cards for our Ohio Business Collation Program to get business to join a collation of over 1,000 Ohio businesses to say they support the LGBTQ community. I also started looking into select cities that are looking into passing any kind of LGBTQ legislation and making notes of who the key players are, the legislation, as well as general information about the city. Friday, I went down to Middletown to work their Pride. It was nice seeing such a large turnout in such a conservative, rural community.

Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday I had spent my mornings anxiously refreshing the Supreme Court website to look at the decisions they are releasing. Then Friday at 10:10 the Dobbs decision was released. We had an emergency all hands meeting for our organization. We are not a reproductive rights organization, but reproductive rights are a LGBTQ issue as well as just a human rights issue. We put out information and resources but most of our energy is spent on two fronts: first, redirecting people to reproductive rights organization, as well as spreading accurate information and second, is to prepare for the fight. Justice Thomas wrote in his opinion that next should be the rulings that affirm gay marriage, ban anti sodomy laws, and the ruling that found the court couldn’t limit access to contraceptives. These are terrifying words to be written by a member of the Court. We are getting ready to fight.

I am learning that My Project USA is a very hands-on organization. It brings you to a place where everyone has a task and things are always busy. We have plans to achieve specific goals, and I am excited to see them come to fruition. Some of the projects include increasing the student count in the summer camp, finalizing the project-based learning activities the students have, and creating more opportunities for volunteers in the pantry.

One of MY Project USA’s biggest accomplishments this summer is launching its inaugural summer camp this year. The center runs as a community safe haven throughout the year but Ms. Zerqa, the partners, and the team wanted to do something extraordinary for this community. They created a summer camp to engage the students in all neighborhoods near the center, have a safe space for children to have fun, and create partnerships with different organizations to ensure the educational learning gap is filled during the summer. We aim to have over 50 students in the programs within both sessions. We are encouraging all families on the West side of Columbus, Ohio to enroll their students in this camp for this enriching experience during the summer. The camp is free, for third through twelfth graders, and provides a one-of-kind experience for the students that are enrolled. Today we were at a festival at a local park to promote the city and get people involved with the center.

The Elementary and Middle school students are engaged in project-based learning, Khan Academy, and technology. The students are excited about all the programs but this week they showed a particular interest in project-based learning. They are making another community garden that has seating for people to enjoy. They created models with clay to show what they wanted the garden to look like. They really enjoyed using their creativity to show what they wanted. I enjoyed watching their minds work while also using teamwork to decide who was going to create particular parts of the garden.

We are also trying to find more volunteers to work in the food bank at the center. This is an essential part of the center because it provides food security for so many members of the community. We need volunteers to help stock the shelves, sign people in, and restock shelves after the food bank is closed. We are looking for anyone interested in giving a few hours of their time to help the community.

Overall, this week was fantastic because I am learning how to make connections with the staff, students, and leaders in the community. I am elated to be working for My Project USA and I know I will continue to learn more about grassroots work as time goes by. This is an organization that allows me to use my critical thinking skills every day.

As children, when we began school our teachers and instructors made it very clear what was expected of us. Sometimes these expectations were on a wall or repeated to us on a weekly basis. When we weren’t meeting these standards, there was that infamous conversation where we were told, “once you get to the next grade level, your teachers won’t tolerate this”. We were accompanied throughout our childhood with specific instructions on how to act, how to complete our assignments, and what to do if anything ever goes wrong. 

I saw this as a necessary component of my childhood because it taught me how to be a part of society. When these instructions weren’t present, I tended to panic. My first encounter with ambiguity began in high school when I participated in the IB program. They prided themselves on giving assignments that did not have one clear answer. As a college student, these are now the only types of assignments I receive. I have found that as I’ve grown up, The delivery of the expectations others have for me has grown to be more ambiguous as well. 

I was asked to create a best practices report for the Siemer Institue in any way that I wish as long as I remain consistent in my methodology. The absence of rules should have made it easier for me to begin my research, but instead, I found it much more difficult as I couldn’t figure out where to start. After I had resolved that, my new challenge was to find a process that worked for me. Upon talking with my supervisor about her vision for the report, I realized that I was gathering much more research than I’d need. The method I was using to gather data was the same one I had used in my past literature reviews for academic papers. In order to stay on track for this assignment, I have to change my trajectory once again. While this could have been avoided had I asked for more specific instructions, this is a great opportunity for me to adapt to a setting where employees are given more freedom to complete their work.

With the work week winding down, the Sustainable Business Directory now holds 280 locally-owned sustainable businesses.  Although data entry appears tedious as I mentioned in last week’s blog post, I have come to appreciate the task by using it as an opportunity to educate myself about local businesses in Central Ohio. For example, one day this week I was adding various coffee shops to the directory. One coffee shop that I found particularly interesting was Roosevelt Coffee. What sets Roosevelt Coffee a part is their profits support charitable initiatives such as fighting hunger, fighting human trafficking, and clean water. Roosevelt Coffee is taking an everyday coffee shop and turning it into a way to speak up for serious issues going on in our community. Businesses that support and educate the community about environmental and social issues go hand in hand with what Simply Living does, which is to connect people with learning opportunities that promote sustainability, environmental justice, and the local economy.

Looking ahead to this weekend, I am going to be at Comfest with Simply Living on Saturday and Sunday. Simply Living will have a tent set up near the Peace & Healing pavilion. I encourage anyone interested in learning more about sustainability in our community to come and hear from us! On Saturday, myself and other interns working at Simply Living will be giving a presentation starting at 2:20 at the Peace and Healing pavilion discussing our projects we have been working on this summer. Specifically, issues such as Solarise, fast fashion, environmental justice, the Simply Living garden tour, and the Sustainable Business Directory. There is a good variety of topics that are included and it should be an interesting conversation. I am looking forward to Comfest because it will be an opportunity to learn and discuss with others that are passionate about sustainable living.    

This week at Cultivate the youth garden program began. Because of the heat and power outages, we had to put it on hold last week. It is nothing new to me, and it’s something simple, but I got to make use of my phone outreach skills last week and this week. I do not like talking on the phone with most people, so it was good to be outside of my comfort zone. I was also without Internet and power last week, so I took extra time to rest and went to a library to make use of the power, AC, and Internet. As much as it sucks to be without those things, it is a good reminder of some of the privileges I have. It is also a reminder of how disgustingly dependent I am on electricity, AC, and Internet! The library as a resource and community space is something I am very grateful for. Libraries can be critical spaces of respite, learning, and community building. I hope to build a space in the future that has some of the same elements as a library. One of the benefits to working in a garden at Cultivate besides the therapeutic benefits is that it gives us a chance to understand the where and how of our food supply. Most of us have a huge disconnect between our food. People grow and/or raise the food and we know very little about the process. We just go to the store, take it off the shelf, then we bring it home with us. I am planning on using the youth program to teach and influence the kids to learn about power differentials, how to share power, and fun activities like creating garden signs and decorative jug bottle planters. To stay in line with one of Cultivates other pillars, to know neighbors, I came up with the idea to gift a planter to at least one new neighbor in the Milo community. This will give the kids an opportunity to interact with neighbors they have not met. I did this myself last month when I was repotting a snake plant. I went to some neighbor neighbors and offered them a piece of the plant. It was a simple way to introduce myself.

PS, Roe V Wade is overturned. “Women Have Options (WHO/O) is Ohio’s statewide abortion fund. Founded in 1992, we are an organization dedicated to helping Ohioans afford their reproductive choices. We believe that everyone should be able to make their own reproductive decisions—and we work to make that a reality in Ohio. We are a founding member of the National Network of Abortion Funds, which includes more than 100 abortion funds around the United States and overseas.” 
https://www.womenhaveoptions.org/

This week, I focused on finalizing our first local fundraising event! This was my first time coordinating an event from beginning to end, and it was eye opening! So many things happen in the background that I wouldn’t have ever taken into consideration if it wasn’t for my team kindly pointing me in the right direction.

Our first event will take place Wednesday, June 29 from 4-8 PM at Seventh Son Brewery on North Fourth Street! All are invited and encouraged to bring as many friends and family to join ETSS for a great time!

I created this flyer/post for our event on Canva. Even though it’s not the most complex thing to have been created, it’s rewarding to see something you make get published and shared!

From the beginning of the summer, the Advancement team wanted to host fundraisers every month leading up to our Evening of Promise. Knowing this, I’ve been working with local breweries to bring this to fruition. It wasn’t until our meeting today that we realized we wanted to combine all of these smaller events into something bigger, which is when we decided to create our Summer Special Series!

While I am finalizing the earlier fundraisers, I am also just beginning to set up later events. Because of this, we weren’t able to publicize all of the information about the ETSS Summer Special Series at once, so we had to improvise, including only what we know now but also making sure to tell everyone to stay tuned for the future!

Outside of focusing on our first fundraiser, I also got to meet the whole staff at our monthly meeting, including our President and CEO, Dr. Seleshi Asfaw. The staff was so kind, and you could tell how passionate everyone was about the work and mission of ETSS. Every team shared their progress, highlighting stories of the direct impact ETSS has on individuals and the community.

At this point of my fellowship, I am officially in the driver’s seat of enacting my fellowship goals and priorities. In a different role I served managing social media accounts, I constantly had my creative mind stifled, and my professional development stagnated. The exact opposite is taking place at my current fellowship. The advancement team is very supportive of my ideas, allowing me to set the tone and pace of my work. I hope to revisit this post during week ten and confidently say I did a great job! We had Monday off due to the federal holiday Juneteenth. I spent that day reflecting on the past and catching up on schoolwork. I am currently taking a public organization and Federal budgeting course. For one of the classes, I created a 2000-word stakeholder analysis that has helped me gauge the direction of our social media.

I have begun developing a content calendar that lists all the important events for all the Clubs. With the team’s support, I hope all Clubs will use it or another variation once I depart. I created an excel sheet that tracks my social media post frequency and innovation. I hope to use it as an accountability tool to gauge my performance for the organization. I created a document called Triumphs and Missed Opportunities. The Document tracks awesome content ideas I come up with and ideas I realized after the fact (time restraints). For a triumph, I posted a Throwback Thursday post with former employees visiting the newly built Champions Companies Milo-Grogan site. A missed opportunity would be Father’s Day, I did not post anything, yet I created a stockpile Father’s Day post for next year. The post consists of three different fathers at our community celebration event.

I had two notable highlights this week. On Wednesday, I visited the KIPP: Columbus site with our Philanthropy Coordinator Ellen. The Site Director Miles gave us a wonderful tour. KIPP: Columbus was a big complex with many unique programs at the site. Today, I had the pleasure of accompanying the children to a private event at the Crew Stadium called Columbus Crew S.T.E.M Day. Our children were given a tour and learned about all the career opportunities at Lower.com FIELD.

I entered this week with big plans for getting my project underway. On Tuesday, I (virtually) spoke with two team members at my organization on their experience. These team members provided me with excellent feedback for how to improve organization operations. Within the daily workflow, opportunities to speak on one’s experience as an employee do not always present themselves. It can thus be difficult for employees to share their opinions and suggestions on how to better their workplace. Reaching out to my peers in the organization illuminated the value of seeking out these experiences. As I continue with my project, I will continue gathering experiences from my coworkers and incorporating their suggestions into my work.

On Wednesday, I woke up early to get ready for the staff meeting at 9am. I was looking forward to catching up on what everyone at Local Matters is working on. However, I woke up feeling ill. This is not the first time since 2020 that I have felt sick, but I knew my 2.5 year streak of not catching Covid-19 was coming to an end. I took a rapid covid test to ensure I would not put my coworkers at risk. I slowly watched the second pink line appear on my rapid test indicating that I have the virus.

Though I often work from home in my role, I understand that rest is absolutely essential for recovery from an illness. Therefore, I did not work after notifying my supervisor of my results. Three days into my isolation, I am still suffering from the infamous “covid brain” that makes doing tasks requiring brain power difficult. When I begin to feel better, hopefully this weekend, I will catch up on my work. For now, I am simply letting my body and mind rest to accelerate my recovery.