Columbus Foundation Fellowship Programs

It has been a very busy week at ECDI! In the WBC we continue to work on the Covid Resource Network intakes, we have a thousand errors we need to correct in our data tracking system, and we were on the radio! In the Food Fort we have decided to have our first Farm Stand next Friday, we created signage in multiple languages, and John has been dealing with a lot feedback about the Food Fort from the tenants.

Edgar went on the radio and spoke in Spanish about what ECDI and the Women’s Business Center do. I got to help Edgar proofread and translate the Women’s Business Center PowerPoint. This project and the Food Fort sign project gave me the opportunity to grow my Spanish writing skills. Honestly, these projects I have done with ECDI have given me more of an opportunity to advance my Spanish skills than the American education system has.

I really have noticed how much my bosses actually know me, and it really reminds me of the difference between private and public schools. In private schools classes are smaller and you tend to get closer to your professors than you would at a large public school. I feel like it’s a similar comparison to non-profits and for-profits, as I have noticed that at ECDI I know everyone, more than their name and title. And when I have worked at for-profits relationships are mostly surface level. This piece of non-profits makes me quite happy as I would rather work somewhere I feel comfortable enough to be my truest self.

As a young child, I always assumed that college students have it together. And now as a college student I always assume that working adults have it together.

Something that I have learned from my bosses is that having it together is not an everlasting state, or even a real thing. You know to me they dress, walk, and talk like they “have it together,” they do taxes, and other real adult things, but this goal of truly having “it” together seems unachievable.

Everything just is a balancing game, one that I can only hope to get good at.

Welp that’s all for this week! See ya in the next!
—Joseline

At this point in the fellowship, I am aware of my remaining projects and have started to map out what I can finish up in the next few weeks. FLOW is such an amazing organization that I wish I could complete ALL of the projects they have in mind! Reflecting on my time so far, I believe FLOW is an organization I will support for as long as I live in Columbus. I am looking forward to attending events long after my time as a fellow ends. FLOW is special because each person involved is deeply, truly passionate about their mission. As volunteers, they give up their evenings, weekends, and days off to support current projects and keep the organization functioning. I am amazed every day by the impact they have made on our city even while fighting a rather thankless battle. Our environment, water sources, communities, and bodies are healthier and safer because of FLOW. A current project that has impacted me most is the Slyh Run Bridge project near Cranbrook Elementary that I mentioned in previous posts. Volunteers with FLOW have dedicated many hours of sweat, muscle power, and planning to get the bridge installed. Multiple tons of dirt, rocks, and gravel moved by hand. After the bridge is completed, will FLOW get the credit they deserve for installing it? They don’t care! Their only goal is to help the community and make sure that the river is a resource, not an obstacle. I am truly envious of their selfless passion to keep our communities strong. Thank you FLOW!

This week I have been working on an outreach project. There is a segment of Fisher Run, which is a tributary of the Olentangy River, that runs through private property. Based on our observations on Google Earth, the banks of the stream consist mainly of turfgrass. To prevent erosion and pollution in the river, it is ideal to have a mixture of native vegetation, trees, and prairie surrounding the stream. My job is to get in contact with these homeowners to see if FLOW can come check it out! The ideal end result would be the homeowners agreeing to convert parts of their lawn into native prairie or homes to native trees. Sounds like a win-win to me! Hopefully they think the same.

I included some pictures of the hard work going into the Slyh Run Bridge project! Talk to you next week. -Shelly

I can’t believe that we have made it all the way to week 6! This week we finally had the kids back at camp! The theme was a day at the beach. We made it an unspoken goal to dress in beach attire for the entirety of this week. I passed the test on the first day but as the week went on, I ran out of different colorful things in my closet. While my outfits were not on par with the theme, this week seemed to be a fan favorite amongst all of the kids. 

At the beginning of the week, we made miniature coral reefs using different types of art material to try and create an array of colors and textures. It was so nice seeing the kids be able to do a project without much structure and direction so we were truly able to see their own creativity within their art pieces. These reefs ended up coming out beautifully! I am so proud that they were able to stay on track with creating a 3 day project. Most people would get lost in what they are doing and give up, these kids just went with the flow and let things fall accordingly. Towards the end of the week we had 2 more big projects, the first being a mobile wall decoration made out of beads and seashells. This project was very challenging. They had to learn how to make a few different types of knots. Some I know people my age can’t do! The other project was a giant sun scenery portrait made out of scrap paper. This one was messy! Using just paper, glue and paint as materials it was bound to be interesting. That it was! All these projects turned out to be incredible and I was so proud that they were able to finish strong. 

As I finish this week off for myself, I will be focused on getting ready for next week. The teens are gonna be coming back,  we should be setting up for that and welcoming them bright and early on Tuesday morning!

Building a strong relationship with clients is one of the most gratifying components of a nonprofit immersion program. Whenever people come in for produce days, I am able to write their name down from memory, and give them their typical weekly items. What was initially hesitant conversation and small talk has transformed into twenty minute conversations about weekend trips and life stories.

Every day, when I come into MFS, I am most excited to see one client. This lady is an Iraqi refugee whose story nearly brought me to tears during my first week at the office. I saw her bustling around the office, bringing people their paperwork and sorting through clothes, and believed that she was a coworker. I soon learned how she learned English on her own when she came to the states; she brought in her job manual and stated that she needed it translated into Arabic so that she could work. She inspired our ESL program and she now inspires my new project; the development of a database for Muslim mental health resources in Ohio. Each day during lunch, we bring each other different Iraqi and Indian foods and discuss our day and our plans. This week we had tabouleh and chicken korma.

At MFS it is very common that a client asks for a referral to a psychiatrist or counselor. Due to the language and cultural gap, more times than not the compatibility between the professional and client is not a match. I am currently developing a way for clients or companies like MFS to sift through the abundance of licensed professionals and find one who understands the nuances of treating a patient with a diverse background.

When I think about my future career plans, I hope to foster relationships with my clients like the ones I have built at MFS. Additionally, I want to find artful ways to tell the stories I have learned so that more people are inspired to contribute to Muslim Family Services’ mission.

I am thankful for the variety of experiences I have been exposed to while at Central. Probably one of the most valuable experiences thus far has been assisting with interviewing candidates for a marketing & outreach position. This is a relatively new experience for me – having only interviewed one candidate for one other position in my professional career. It is so difficult. 

Central works really hard to hire the best candidates for open positions. One of the biggest challenges is finding candidates that are interested in part-time work. For nonprofit organizations with limited resources, especially those that rely on grants to fund their programs, this is the reality in which they must operate. And even though Central has committed to paying livable wages for employees across the organization, hiring is still a challenge. 

Most impressive to me, have been the candidates that come into the interviews prepared. Many of them have taken the time to look over the website, and some have even given examples of changes they would make, or initiatives they would undertake to help grow marketing at Central. I also think it is important to be able to give specific examples of past experiences that you can draw from to answer interview questions. 

We have some promising candidates, so I hope we are able to pick a candidate soon that will be able to expand Central’s reach, tell authentic stories about the awesome work they are doing, and make connections with community members. 

PS – to all of my fellow Fellows, make sure you are documenting all of the awesome things you are doing this Summer with your host sites! These details will come in handy as you prepare for your own interviews in the future!

This week, I have continued making edits to the Zora’s House employee manual, and turning towards starting to restructure their operations manual. As my supervisor mentioned in one of our meetings, the editing process for these manuals is a lot more complicated than it appears at first glance. A large bump in the editing process has been figuring out who the intended audience is for the handbook and the manual. At first, the answer seems simple: the employee manual is for employees, and the operations manual is for anyone who needs information on how Zora’s House works. 

However, for a very small organization that will rapidly expand in the near future, the intended audience has shifted. Before, the employee manual might’ve been just for the fellowship positions at Zora’s House. Now, with the acquisition of a new, much larger space that is in the works, the number of employees will increase substantially, and can include a variety of new positions that might push Zora’s House to change some of its employee policies. Also, the operations manual for the Zora’s House space might be used by a variety of people, including the organization’s volunteers and members. However, the knowledge Zora’s House volunteers need to know or have access to about the space is a lot more detailed and includes more sensitive information compared to members and nonmembers using the space. So, who should the operations manual serve?

These questions of audience need to be resolved so that we know how to best structure these documents and know what language we should use to best convey the culture and values of the organization. However, something that has been very useful throughout this process has been seeing how other organizations structure their employee handbooks and operations manuals. Here, I see how important it is to be able to learn from others, and also be that tool for other organizations. This has reminded me of the conversations in our last learning session, and how difficult it is to find good and effective collaborative efforts. The sharing of knowledge between organizations is a crucial form of collaboration that might be overlooked sometimes, and it is a way of working together that should be better valued. It can help make organizations with similar missions and values more effective in their approaches.

At this point, we are over halfway done with the internships and I am getting into a solid rhythm with things at City Year.

This week started off with even more social media hype for the Regatta boat. Although City Year isn’t doing too hot as of today, I feel that the posts are getting plenty of engagement and that people appreciate them. I started interviewing and posing staff members with the boat and that has been a lot of fun for two reasons. First, it lets me work on these editing skills and learn more about Canva and other media creation/distribution websites. Secondly, I get to interact with staff members from different teams and see them in a more personal light. It’s bee interesting to see them share in their own words why they do their work at City Year Columbus and what matters to them. I also get to see them be a bit goofy and play a bit with the boat.

I also started doing some Asset Mapping work this week. It has involved finding the different areas and neighborhoods in which City Year serves, locating the different organizations that work within those boundaries and, eventually, will include lists of businesses, liaisons and community members which which City Year Columbus can work on creating lasting relationships. For the development team, this is useful because it helps us gauge who City Year stakeholders could approach in the future and what kinds of interests lie around the schools that we serve. It is also a useful tool for the organization, since our teams can now have a running list of people they can approach that are based right on the neighborhoods we serve and help disseminate information and receive feedback from a bottom-up perspective.

As a side note, this has also been incredibly useful for me in familiarizing myself with Columbus. Since I am originally from California and lived here about 5 months before the pandemic shut everything down, I have not been able to familiarize myself with Columbus and its different and varying neighborhoods/areas. Getting to the nitty gritty of the dividing lines of neighborhoods according to the City of Columbus has helped me locate the different streets and their significance within the city at-large. I created the Google map pictured below and seeing the boundaries demarcated by streets helped me as I located different neighborhood associations and more in this project.

I can’t wait to see what else I learn the next week, especially since a new hire for the Development Team is about to start. Learning about the Development Team needs these past six weeks has been an interesting ride and I hope to learn more with a new team member on board before the internship finishes.

• This week I was able to continue working on my project. I have been pivoting my approach to my project. I have continued to edit the emails I plan to send to the congressional members. One thing that I am looking to do is potentially finalize everything and get it ready to send out to congressional members and put it in a folder for the ROX members to send out when congressional members are back in session. Over the next few weeks, I will work on follow up material to send to the congressional members if and when they respond. ROX just had a new partner added to their team. Her background is in education, and she will be super helpful in aiding me in my project and making sure it is headed in the right direction. 
• Another item I have been working on is identifying contacts in organizations ROX could pair with. I have identified contacts to reach out and created an email template for those organizations as well. I have been adding crucial statistics to the emails to show the necessity of ROX. 
• My project timeline has shifted because of the fact congressional members are in their summer session. I have been working at adjusting my timeline so I can finish all my projects by the end of the internship. 
• I also have been researching other areas of interest that I might have in the organization. I might soon be diving deeper into the curriculum development part of ROX. 
• This weekend is the ROX Board retreat. I am excited to attend and hear all the wonderful things ROX has in store for the next year. There will be discussions about plans for the upcoming year and celebrations about the accompaniments ROX has had in the past year. It will also be super interesting to hear all the different perspectives people will bring from their field of interest.