Columbus Foundation Fellowship Programs

This week was action-packed.  One of the tasks I was charged with was hosting a conversation with Nationwide Children’s Hospital (NCH) physician residents.  On occasion, the BGCC will host conversations with NCH residents with the purpose of broadening their understanding of the resources available in the Columbus community.   Since my supervisor at the BGCC understands that I am more than equip to have conversations surrounding cultural competence, he was more than happy to allow me to lead the discussion.

I met the residents at the South Side Club.  After I gave them the tour of the facilities, we sat down and introduced ourselves.  After introductions I gave them some statistics surrounding the many barriers for youth in our community.  For example, only 12% of youth in Franklin County are a part of after-school programming.  They had excellent questions and were genuinely interested in trying to find ways they can make a difference as physicians.

This atmosphere of curiosity lead us to start to talk about the challenges they have experience working with vulnerable populations of youth.  One of the residents brought up that parents seem to “not care.”  As an educator, I heard this label placed on parents before.

In order to get the residents talking a little, I asked, “How did you know the parents did not care?”

The person who made the comment stated that parents of color are often on the phone and seem uninterested.  We all proceeded to discover alternative causes to uninterested behavior besides they “don’t care.”  For example, the parent could be worried about what the family is going to eat that night or they might have other health concerns.

We had a brief conversation about the historical context of the health system and how this context justifies Black American’s distrust of physicians.  Moreover, we talked about how physicians can gain the trust of patients or guardians.  One suggestion I had was to be clear with parents that the physician believes the parent is the expert of their child’s health.  This means going beyond collecting a questionnaire.  Physicians should go above and beyond to have verbal communication with parents, empowering them to partner with the physicians to maximize the health of the child.

At the end of the conversation we had fostered mutually understanding.  As a person of color, I myself am very skeptical of doctors.  However, meeting with the NCH residents gave me hope for the future of the healthcare system.

Podcast link: https://soundcloud.com/user-110817248/tcf-blog-week-4/s-xxwjO

Podcast transcript:

“Greetings, listeners! This week at TECH CORPS we had E4Tech training in the office. E4Tech is a professional development seminar for 3rd and 4th grade teachers where they learn how to integrate computer science and computational thinking into their curriculum. It’s a really cool program. We needed to make an updated informational and promotional video, so I took pictures and video during the training. I also pulled teachers aside to interview them about their experiences. It was really cool asking the teachers questions because they are so passionate about what they do, and it was awesome to see their faces light up when they talked about how well their students benefited from having E4Tech in their classroom. They all had a lot of really good things to say, which is awesome, but makes my job of editing even harder! I’m currently in the process of cutting down footage and putting this video together.

E4Tech training materials!

I’ve done a lot of video editing here, which is really cool, because that’s basically what I’m going to school for. It’s really nice to know that I’m actually using my degree, and that it’s in something I’m passionate about. It’s also really relieving to know that businesses and organizations really do need media people, and I hopefully shouldn’t be having to scramble looking for jobs.

Cool things I’m making!

I’ve done some reflecting on my placement with TECH CORPS, and I think that there is definitely a reason that I’m here. I see the needs that I’m filling, which is super rewarding. All the people who work here are so passionate and busy with their own specific jobs, there’s no extra time for them to promote what they’re doing or create content. That’s where I come in. Being able to visit sites and then share what we’re doing with the world is so cool. At this point in the summer, we’ve mostly stopped promoting enrollment for our camps and have moved on to celebrating what students are doing and thanking sponsors. This is my favorite type of content to create, because it feels like we’re really telling the true story of what we do here. Something that’s pretty cool that I got to post about this week is that TECH CORPS has once again been named a “Wonderful Workplace for Young Professionals” by CityPulse Columbus, and I can attest to that! It’s cool because I get to see it in action, and our work is being recognized by Columbus!

Friend-a-ronies!

I also got to do some fun stuff this week outside of work. Tuesday night the fellows went out to a Clippers game. While there were only a few of us, we still had fun! Despite the cold, wet day we still managed to make the best out of the situation, which I think is really important. I’m so glad that I am continuing to grow the relationships with the other fellows and I really want to get to know everyone even better, so hit me up, pals.”

As I’ve increasingly settled in to my role at Local Matters, I’ve noticed a disparity between myself and the rest of the staff: everyone else wears a million and a half hats throughout the day in fulfilling their roles, and I have been assigned one hat while focusing on a sole project. This is a new experience for me: I’m very adapted to juggling a variety of tasks and keeping light on my toes. The last few weeks have been challenging and eye-opening on this note, as my work has solely revolved around one single project: data consolidation on Airtable. I mentioned last week that I feel well suited for this work, which I absolutely stand by to be true. However, I’ve realized how hard it is focusing on a single project when there is a flurry of action happening around me every single day. People are coming in and out of the office to and from programs, meetings are being held, food is being cooked, skills are built, experiences are had, and I’m taking it all in with my eyes wide open. It’s admittedly hard for me to stare at a screen at a comfortable desk when there is so much more work to be done and sleeves to roll up.  Focusing on this higher-level task will ultimately aid the rest of the organization in program execution, but I haven’t been able to help but feel that I’m not doing as much as I possibly could to help the organization.

Then – just as I was getting sidelined by this dilemma – we had a Fellows learning session this week. At this session, I heard a profound comment from Oyauma Garrison, the president and CEO of A Kid Again: Don’t pass judgement, create value. I can’t say the exact context of the conversation at the time, but it pushed me to take a step back. Rather than judging how green the grass must be outside, how could I make sure that the task I have been assigned to is completed to the greatest degree? How could I create the most value from the opportunity that I’ve been given, rather than getting too distracted by the exciting whirlwind of action around me? This combination of pausing and pondering helped me get back on track, right when I needed it.

That being said, after a few weeks of working on the Airtable tool it’s nearly complete! This involved a giant jigsaw puzzle, essentially combining data from various sources and in various formats into one big base. There were five original bases, each with different information on contact lists, addresses, curriculum, program recipes, staff members, garden locations, satellite programs, etc. Information from a variety of other sources, such as an online scheduling platform, and a cloud based filing system, was also pulled. Much of this information overlaps and interacts with one another, so figuring out how to maintain the integrity of this information while keeping it easily digestible to all users was a challenge. A fun part of my week was trying to decide on a name for this tool – Programming Base & Journeys (PB&J) was a fun one, though Master Accounts of Programming (MAP) might be a more practical idea. If anyone has any ideas, I’m all ears!

Above, the dashboard of the nearly completed Airtable programming tool. Any ideas for names?

“I couldn’t do anything other than this work- I believe in the nonprofit cause”.

This week, I reflected on Kelsie Fields’ response to a question asked by a Columbus Fellow in a session on nonprofit development. Regardless of a role one holds in a nonprofit setting, the importance of passion for a cause cannot be overstated. This week, I reflected on my own passions, and how they fit into the mission of City Year.

I am passionate about equity and equal access to resources. On an incredibly tangible, real-world level, City Year works to advance the education of those most in need in the Columbus community. I am passionate about investing in communities and those living in them- through my work, City Year can continue to function as a growing nonprofit, leveraging new funds and bringing on a larger AmeriCorps team to serve. These passions help me to keep the larger picture/goals in mind while I work on daily tasks.

This week, I sometimes struggled to see the larger picture when it came to the work that I was doing. I was unsure of how smaller tasks fit into the larger mission of the organization. On Wednesday, I stopped to reflect on the progress I had made that week. I went through all of the tasks I had been assigned, and assessed how they fit into the larger success of City Year Columbus. Additionally, I noted what I had and had not enjoyed about the tasks. With all of this in mind, I considered how the work that had been done continued to support a larger vision. Whether entering donor records or tracking grant funding over time, I will continue to always link my everyday work into the larger goals I have set for my summer fellowship. My hope is to continue to do this reflection every week, as it helps connect my passions to my everyday work.

I can’t believe that my fourth week at the Jewish Community Center (JCC) is already almost over! During the first week of my internship, I attended three days of orientation where I learned in great depth about the role of the camp counselors. Although camp began the following week, my counselors in training (CITs) were not to come in until the third week of my internship. There are three camps at the JCC. With my CITs coming in last week, they spent their time at Camp Chaverim, which consists of campers from kindergarten, first, second, and third grade. My nine CITs were spread out in different bunks throughout Camp Chaverim. This week however, my CITs were placed in Camp Arye, the special needs camp. Not only has this week been an eye-opening week for the CITs, but for myself as well. Although I have a cousin who has Down syndrome, I have never spent time with special needs children who have a variety of disabilities. The CITs have been doing an extraordinary job with assisting the counselors in leading the special needs campers. During their last week at camp, the CITs will get the opportunity to select which camp they would like to spend their last week in. Earlier today, I was excited to hear two of my CITs say that they would want to spend their last week in Camp Arye.

My position as the CIT coordinator has so far been a great and humbling experience. Although I have had experience working with children, I have never assisted with mentoring and training children who would soon take on a leadership position. This week I learned what it is like to take on the role of being an efficient mediator, as I had to mediate for the CITs and the counselors who they were working with.

My fourth week with Cartoon Crossroads Columbus and the Columbus Foundation was great. The week kicked off with a fellows learning session in which we listened to two speakers: Oyauma Garrison, the president and C.E.O. of A Kid Again, and Kelsie Fields, the development manager at City Year Columbus. The two had very different stories that brought them to work in nonprofits and served a great juxtaposition for potential career paths to consider.

When deliberating various career paths, I put my happiness first: I know what types of jobs will make me miserable and which ones I’ll be passionate about. It’s important to consider, however, the economic side of things as well. I would like to be comfortable, have the ability to pay off my student loans and travel and I was under the impression that working in a nonprofit wouldn’t get me to that point. This learning session proved me wrong and made it clear that nonprofit salaries are becoming more competitive. It would be a dream to work towards a cause I care about and live the way I want to.

The learning session set the tone for the rest of the week and my days at CXC have been energized and productive. This week I focused more on curating specific content for our social medias by reaching out to the exhibiting guests and the administrative partners and asking them to help us grow our follower base and content. I’ve taken on a very marketing-based role in the past couple of weeks which has been an exciting learning experience. I’ll be moving forward in a more administrative role and creating a database for target demographics to attend the festival. I will be putting together some options for outreach to those groups and presenting them to my boss, Tom. I’m looking forward to getting started, as this next project will allow me to have a lot of creative freedom and I can really combine my expertise in geographic research and art.

As you can imagine, Huck House is a busy place. The staff are in and out of the office and the shelter. They are meeting with youth, linking them to services, logging all the necessary information, etc. Through all of this, I have been meeting each person one by one. I was able to meet Kyra this week. Kyra is our Youth Outreach Coordinator. She is one busy woman! Everyone at Huck House refers to her as the local celebrity—she knows everyone including all the kids. After speaking with Kyra, I had a better idea about how Huck House used to operate Project Safe Place when they had a better capacity. Kyra was able to recall a time where Huck House visited all our Safe Place sites with cookies in hand! Huck House is all about relationships. They value listening and most importantly prioritize it. For Safe Place, annual site visits need to be made to our Safe Place sites to ensure everyone is all in all the time. I know that to accomplish this task it is about relationship building with our sites such as the libraries and fire departments.  Fostering and building these relationships over the summer will ultimately keep our sites informed and better able to serve our youth in crisis.

Over the past couple weeks; I have been seeking how else to build relationships with the community besides our Safe Place sites. I want more people and youth to know about Safe Place.  I have started to reach out to local organizations that are in contact with youth to help relay our message. These organizations will be able to inform their youth about Huck House services and also Safe Place.  The response so far has been incredible. One truly inspiring line came from the Department of Social Change at Ohio State (if you haven’t seen what this department does, go check it out, they rock.) In an email back, they wrote, “the work we all can do in keeping our youth safe is important and quite clearly, a group effort.”

A group effort. Building and maintaining relationships is a priority, and when Huck House does this, it keeps our Columbus youth safe.

Ethiopian Tewahedo Social Services’s summer programming started before any of us at ETSS felt truly prepared for it, and I think we are collectively starting to understand what needs to be accomplished each week and how to better organize ourselves in order to better serve the communities we work with.

Each week, I try to list my goals to accomplish in helping coordinate ETSS’s Summer Enrichment Camp as well as my weekly goals for planning the Youth Summit. From these overarching goals, I create daily tasks for myself in order to keep myself on track. Some of my to-dos are repetitive so I keep myself interested by brainstorming ways in which I can better carry out my tasks and duties that both saves time for me and makes others’s lives easier. I love taking long-term plans and goals and breaking them into smaller, more manageable tasks that can be accomplished on weekly and daily levels, and I am thankful my work allows me to do that. In a way, I think this is helping prepare me for the long-term types of projects I will have to complete in graduate school.

I feel as if my summer with ETSS is going by so quickly. At the end of this week, I pay August’s rent for my apartment in Pennsylvania, and I only have a little more than a month before I move out of state and start graduate school. Working with ETSS, I see the practical, tangible, and meaningful work I can do based on my passions and fields of study. I can see a way in which I can create a routine working 40 hours a week, having evenings and weekends free, and time to take care of myself. I can see the ways in which I can be creative with my time and tasks to find ways to keep myself engaged and interested.

Then, I anticipate graduate school, being a full-time student, working 20 hours a week, and needing to find time to study, complete projects, maintain a presence within my department, and take care of myself. I wonder if I will gain practical experience necessary for jobs in the future, or if I will be overqualified, underpaid, and underemployed. I anticipate the stress and challenges I will encounter in graduate school, and I wonder, is it worth it? Working full-time with a set schedule in a relatively comfortable setting feels like such a luxury to me. Why wouldn’t I want to continue this?

Sometimes we just don’t give ourselves enough credit.

Over the last week at Equality Ohio, I have had the great privilege of working on several tasks. I’m solidifying a fundraising event that I put together and working with codes in the volunteer database. As time goes on, I’m getting more familiar with that nine-to-five lifestyle and I finally understand why my parents were so tired when they got home from work growing up. I’m also realizing how convenient conference calls can be because you can get in touch with everyone as opposed to trying to coordinate a meeting. Everything is falling into place for me, and I’m lucky to be here.

Most importantly, this week I was assigned to put together a curriculum for a local organization in Columbus to help them be more inclusive with LGBTQ+ clients. Even to this day, it still surprising to me that I’m in a position where I can teach others. It’s a big responsibility, and it definitely leaves you second-guessing yourself constantly.

LGBTQ+ Anti-Discrimination Curriculum

My biggest obstacle when creating this curriculum was updating terms such as “gender identity” and “sex assigned at birth” – words that are constant in my vocabulary, but perhaps not others. I find the term “sex assigned at birth” to be very minimizing to transgender individuals, and I think we too often fixate on that term when we should be recognizing people for who they know themselves to be. Creating this curriculum gave me the opportunity to create the representation that I know is needed out there, which definitely comes with changing some outdated terms.

I can’t say how many times I’ve been sitting in on a training that was meant to be inclusive but there were still just some things about it that rubbed me the wrong way. I know I shouldn’t be too much of a critic because we’re all constantly learning, but it was certainly an honor to be trusted to put this together and receive positive feedback. I feel like I’m making the difference that needs to be made for the LGBTQ+ community one step at a time.

“Sometimes you just gotta smile through it.”

After my second week of working with the Summer Arts Camp and the third week working with the staff at the King Arts Complex, I am still finding my place. Every day I wake up at 5:45am to make sure I am on time to catch my 6:45 bus. I then take this bus downtown to catch my second bus around 7:15am. Once I arrive at the King Arts Complex at 7:30am, I am responsible for checking in parents, making lego spaceships, and gathering the breakfast information for the representative from Recreation and Park. For the most part, I am tired and alone until 9am when the rest of the staff comes in. The only person there to talk to is my coworker Micheal (alias, not real name).

Micheal is a relatively tall and quiet guy who was placed at the King Arts Complex through a job placement program. He arrives at 8am and leaves at 4pm before heading to his second job from 5pm to 10pm. Between 4 and 5, sometimes he has to take his mother to her chemotherapy. I had been working with him for 13 days before I learned any of this and I would have never guessed because of his smile. He comes in every day and gets bombarded by a little chorus of “Mr. Micheal” and smiles. He often gets left with the shorter lunch period and smiles. No matter what, he smiles. I asked him how he felt about the length and content of his days and he said: “Sometimes you just gotta smile through it because if you don’t, things will be just as bad and you’ll feel worse” about it. I asked him if I could quote him on my weekly blog, he smiled and said “Its about time someone did”.

This conversation perfectly explains how my week has been. Waking up early to the sound of screaming and phones ringing was initially hard for me. I usually want to work alone and keep my head down. I like the sound of silence with a hint of r&b through muffled headphones. After talking to Micheal, I realized that I don’t smile as much I could. My headphones distract me from the musicality of the camp. This week I stepped out of the office and emerged into the learning going on around me and realized that the days got shorter when I was working and having fun. I finished a weekly newsletter and have started other writing projects with my new found inspiration. When my first check came on Thursday, I felt like I had already been paid for my work with the knowledge I’ve gathered over these past 3 weeks. I learned that I cannot find my place, because I have been given the opportunity to make my own. I am excited to see what I can create in the next few weeks.