Columbus Foundation Fellowship Programs

Hello Everyone!

          This is the start of our last week with our host organizations. As our time is wrapping up, I can’t help but reflect on all of the opportunities I’ve had this summer. Since that list of opportunities is too long to fit into one post, I’ll take this blog entry to bid my farewell to Godman Guild.

          In case some of you guys forgot, I have been working with the Godman Guild all summer throughout my fellowship with Green Columbus. Helping out with their summer employment KEYS program, I have been working with 14 – 15 year olds all summer on environmental education. This Wednesday will be my last day working with the program, and we are taking a trip to AEP to learn about their environmental initiatives in the corporate energy sector.

          I wanted to take the time on this post to thank the Godman Guild for letting me collaborate with them this summer. While at times the program was a little rocky, I hope the teens in the program learned as much from me as I did from them. The past ten weeks have opened my eyes to the social structure of Columbus, and the Columbus community outside of Ohio State.

          For the first time in my life, I was treated as a professional adult this summer. I was able to sit in on meetings, interview candidates for the program, and provide insight when problem solving. I am truly appreciative of the opportunities that Godman Guild has provided for me. I wish the best of luck to all of the 14 – 15 year olds in KEYS program moving forward, I know you guys will do great things in life!

                                                                                               Until next time,

                                                                                                          Jake

The final week of Summer Art Workshops was expectedly bittersweet. Our team of interns who I have come to know very well over the course of the last 6 weeks left on Friday. Several of the interns are from Denison’s art department or Columbus College of Art and Design. Most of my education and job experience has been specific to the dance field and I am often surrounded by dancers who think similarly to me and create using dance. It is refreshing to spend this summer with studio artists and teachers who create in mediums that I have never tried – such as painting, pottery, drawing, and mixed medias. I was continuously blown away by my peer Katie who is talented in many areas including drawing and sculpting. I witnessed her create quirky, whimsical screen prints that she printed on to bags. Being surrounded by this type of creativity was inspiring and has lead me to explore new art mediums.

My last camp was called Magical Mischief in the Museum. The participants were in grades ranging from 6th- 8^th. A Harry Potter themed workshop, students explored ideas and creations discussed in the books and seen on screen in the movies. Per usual, I was deeply surprised to see the amount of creativity and imagination used throughout the week.

They developed a final project in which they created their own Diagon Alley – the wizarding street in Harry Potter in which all witches and wizards buy their supplies. In teams, students created their own product and storefronts in which to sell their wizarding supplies. Our street had a wand shop, apothecary, broom shop, potions shop and more. They even developed their own currency and created a bank. On Friday, families arrived and use the currency to purchase the creations sold at each store front. It was magical, to say the least!

Chloe

If there is one thing I have learned from this summer, it is that nothing in this life is constant. I am currently in a season of all of my college comforts (swimming, apartment, roommates, classes, Insomnia cookies right around the corner) being phased out of my life and being replaced with the newness of adult life (9-5 work hours, rush hour traffic, and not having to have papers, exams, and projects linger in my mind etc.). Although difficult at times, the transition from college is also exciting as it brings new challenges and triumphs.  I am so thankful that I have a network of people who are either currently going through the same transition or have been here and remember what it is like. My coworkers have been amazing at not only supporting my current projects at work, but my life in general as I look forward to the next chapter. There is truly no where else I would rather have spent my summer of transition than at the Grange Insurance Audubon Center.

I have had a blast planting and tending to the herbs in the vertical garden, which is why it broke my heart when we discovered the soil was sinking and the landscaping fabric on the back of the palette was sagging. The only solution to this was to uproot the herbs and take out the horizontal planks so that we could dump the soil, rip out the landscaping fabric from the outside of the palette and put it on the inside. Sounds painless, right? Wrong.  Besides the emotional attachment I had made with the herbs, pruning and petting them, it was also a physical endeavor ripping and stapling and manipulating the fabric to fit the inside of the palette on one of the most humid days of summer. It was certainly not as easy as 1,2,3, as Pinterest led me to believe, but by the end we had a much more structurally sound, comfy home for my precious herbs.

The above vertical garden is brought to you by countless Pinterest tutorials (some great, some not so great), help from Master Gardener Lori Overmeyer, Strader’s Garden Center, superstar volunteer Anne, and my awesome supervisor Michael!

If you want to learn how to make your own vertical garden, come to the Grange Insurance Audubon Center this Wednesday at 6:30pm, there will be dried herbs for the taking!

Tori

Hi, hello, welcome back to my weekly blog about all things LEADERSPARK! I have good news, and I have bad news.

The BAD news… This is the second to last blog I will be so privileged to write about my experience. 😦

The GOOD news… It’s going to be a good one.

This past week was a flurry of commotion, as we made the finishing touches to our weekend retreat: IGNITE. It was hours of making posters, creating programs, finalizing speakers… until it all finally culminated in our two day back-to-school extravaganza at the Rosedale International Center. We had about 20 students at the retreat between the two days, and it was so incredibly fulfilling to watch them each walk away with more knowledge and skills than they came to us with.

The retreat covered areas ranging anywhere from financial responsibility to creating a personal mission statement to the power of networking, and it was encouraging to see the ways that the students were truly engaged in the content. There are so many stereotypes that fly around when you work with the demographics of students that LeaderSpark engages with, and when you work with millennials in general: that they are entitled, they want to be given things for free, they don’t want to work. But working with these kids over the past weekend, I have seen nothing but the opposite. When you give youth the tools to build a successful future and show them that they CAN have it… They’re going to build themselves a dang mansion (or at least a nice apartment that they can afford with the salary of their first big job).

I even got the chance to facilitate one of the activity sessions that we did during the retreat– a group communication and teamwork exercise that required the students to all stand in a circle, hold hands, and work a hula hoop around the circle without breaking the link in between each person. It was a really neat experience to be able to use the leadership skills that I’ve acquired during my time in school at the retreat, so I’m definitely thankful for that.

Overall, I can walk away from this weekend knowing that we really did some good here. We made a difference in the lives of these students– and not only for a weekend, but for the entire school year. We have shown them a path that will lead them to a brighter future, and I’m so excited to see where these youth go as a result.

One heck of a last weekend, that’s for sure!

Until next time, my friends,

Sam

By Kelsie Fields

It is hard to believe that this summer is almost over! Final presentations are fast approaching and final wrap-up has begun at the Symphony. This past week, I worked on finishing up all the final details of the Beethoven 5k. This includes thanking our donors, following-up via email with our attendees, and more! It’s always important to remember that an event is never over on the day of. Event wrap-up lasts weeks and even months depending on the size of the event!

In addition to working on the Beethoven 5k, I also assisted with a large grant application last week. I haven’t had much experience with grants in the past, but I do know the importance of grants to most nonprofit organizations. Writing the grant was a learning experience, and I appreciated the opportunity to really be a part of the process. I enjoy development work because I find it rewarding to be a part of bringing the mission to life, whether that be through events or through fundraising (sometimes the same thing!).

My next mini-project for the rest of the summer is to create guidelines for how to successfully plan the Beethoven 5k in the future! My goal is to synthesize everything I learned about marketing the event, reaching out to donors, and organizing event logistics. I will also be creating a timeline for each of the steps that must be taken to plan the event with details about certain deadlines that must be met. Hopefully this outline will set up future Beethoven 5k organizers for success!

My last task this week is to keep up with our Symphony blog and write a press release for our Sounds of Summer concert happening later this month! Sounds of Summer, similar to our Fourth of July concert, Sounds of Freedom, is an amazing event that brings in many families and community members. Because our summer concerts are free and outside, they attract a larger and more diverse audience that makes for fun time. Even though I won’t be around to finish planning the concert, I’m excited to be a part of the audience!

Thanks for reading!

It was almost 4:45 pm. I began to feel my body get warm. I sprinted to the copy room to clip all of the grant application documents together. Then, I gathered my things and ran outside to my car. I thought to myself, “Wow Victoria. You did that! You’re really about to get this grant turned in on time.” But, when I pulled my car out of the parking lot, something felt odd. My car seemed to lean over onto the left side every time I hit the brakes. Only a few feet away from turning onto East Main Street, I got out of my car to inspect. I failed to see anything out of the ordinary, but did not feel safe driving my car. “What are the odds!?” I thought to myself. Risking my life, I parked my car on the street, ran back into the building, and kindly asked my co-worker to drive the grant application downtown with less than 15 minutes until its due time of 5:00pm. I was not sure if the grant would be turned in on time, but at that point I was over it. I knew that I put all the time and effort that I could into the grant, and for my first official grant application, that was an accomplishment.

Fast forward to the following week, my co-worker was unable to turn the grant application in on time. I called the grant funders and discovered that our grant application was not accepted. But, it was fine. My co-workers helped me laugh it off so that I did not feel defeated. They assured me that in the nonprofit world, things like this happen. I believed them and went on with my day when I discovered that I had received an email message and voice mail message from the grant funders! They called me to tell me (again) that my grant application was disqualified but that due to low applicants they were re-releasing the grant application in a few weeks! I laughed. All that running around and worry over my car troubles to find out that I could turn the application in at a later time. Rest assured, the grant application will be turned in on time this time around.

P.S. It turns out my car’s muffler was beginning to detach. A few days before I wrote this blog, I discovered my muffler hanging nearly to the ground. It is replaced now!

Ok so let us get all the sappy phrases out of the way: it’s the final stretch; we are nearing the end; it’s almost over; welcome to the beginning of the end; it’s the final countdown. Now I have “The Final Countdown” by Europe playing in my head. It’s true, one week left and so much left to accomplish.

This week was a big one. The marketing project team met with the final two firms being considered for DSC’s re-branding project. It felt odd to have these professional creatives trying to win my affection. Both firms were very impressive. I gained insight on what all goes into branding and marketing for a business. Turns out, a lot goes into every little detail. I heard once that the color red makes people hungry, which explains why every logo is red on food exit signs. The strategic evaluations of a market determine the best color pallets, fonts, spacing, sizing, etc. Basically everything.

Working on this project has taught me a lot about research, professional writing, and investment decisions. This project investment is a large one and I feel honored to have been the primary contact on this for DSC. It is a sad realization to consider I will not be at DSC to see this project thru, but I can only hope to assist DSC in making the best possible investment decision for their future.

Today, the project team met. After thirty minutes spent solving technology, due to a video phone acting up, poor reception, and small office space, we finally sat down together and made a decision on the firm DSC will work with. YAY!

I have one more week to make the best of this experience. I have been reviewing my do-to list and narrowing down the priorities of the priorities. Cheers to the cliche: let us make the most of the time we have.

Karlee H.

For many students, school is one of the few places they may depend upon for a reliable meal. But what happens when school is out for the summer for these students who receive free or reduced lunch? The City of Columbus Recreation and Parks Department sponsors a program called GoLunch! in the summer months and has been working to address this issue for 48 years. The Summer Lunch Service Program program is designed to provide safe spaces for kids to eat healthy food and play during the hottest time of the year. Many of the sites for the program are located in food deserts, where healthy and sustainable food is impossible to find. The Summer Lunch Program provided more than 500,000 healthy meals last summer. The GoLunch! Campaign was launched this year to encourage sponsors and partnerships as well as destigmatize free-lunch programs. The department utilizes 220 pop-up sites all over Columbus with most sites providing some type of enrichment as well such as crafts or games.

Ohio Wildlife Center has had the opportunity to be a part of this enrichment this summer. We offer our outreach and education programs for a reduced price and go to a different location throughout Columbus every Wednesday. I came along for the ride this week and it was one of my favorite experiences here this summer. These are kids who are facing real struggles but for an hour they were fascinated by an opossum, an owl, a turtle and a snake. Wildlife in urban circumstances is often seen as a nuisance or a threat and many of them had never seen an opossum or an owl before. The kids were initially terrified by the snake but by the end of the program most of them were willing to pet him, claiming he felt like a basketball. This program felt so different than other educational programs I’ve experienced throughout the summer because of the overwhelming spirit of genuine interest. They asked questions for the sake of learning. The little girl below even hugged Stormy, our education director, after she let her pet the snake while Stormy held back tears.

After the program was over, many of the kids ran up to us asking us if we needed help carrying the animal crates back out to the van and I was once again overwhelmed by their kindness and willingness to help others.

While at first, Ohio Wildlife Center may not seem directly connected to issues such as food insecurity, summer learning loss or lower-income communities, we are all socially responsible to do our part in our communities. Our mission spans the breadth of many issues, surpassing native wildlife health. We do not have to feel limited to our finite space in life. Doing good is doing good any where you can, any time you can, any way you can.

This week includes even more reflection on my time spent at CRIS.  Are you surprised? (Jokes)

Anyway, a few days ago I saw a fortune from a fortune cookie that said, “To teach is to learn twice.”  I looked up the quote just now and it appears the quote originated with the French writer Joseph Joubert.  Good looks, Monsieur Joubert.

This quote resonated with me and my fellowship in multiple ways, with my volunteering in the ESL/Employment classroom and the community guidelines I’ve been writing.

As I’ve been spending one afternoon a week with the students learning English, I’ve learned English truly is hard.  As a native resident, I definitely take for granted my ability to communicate clearly and completely with another person (in English).  As most of our students are refugees, I can only imagine the internal struggle they are going through because of the inability to speak in their new country.  Most of them don’t know any English because none of them chose to come to the United States – they were forced to leave their homes, belongings, friends, and even family.  As I teach them English, I learn twice over the difficulty and importance of learning to communicate.

The community guidelines I’ve been writing and compiling are meant to be sort of a quick general summary of the diverse refugee community in Columbus.  Of course, these guidelines can be neither all inclusive nor completely correct, but I think they will give people an idea of where the refugees are coming from (both physically and culturally).  I have learned a lot about the communities by talking to members of each refugee population in Columbus, but now I am creating the guidelines to teach others and I am looking at all of the information in a new light and therefore learning again.  I must take the information I’ve gathered and put it into digestible content for the general public.  This project resonates with me because I hope it will spark empathy for the new arrivals in our country.

I can’t believe I’m almost done at CRIS, but this summer has made me realize more about myself, my passions, and my future career.  I know I want to help people and at CRIS, I learned there are millions of refugee to help in various ways.  Whether it be at an NGO, nonprofit, or a government agency, I know I can find the job I’m meant to do.

Thank you to the Columbus Foundation for giving me such a great opportunity and to CRIS for hosting me this summer.

Sincerely,

Katy Nash

By Kelsie Fields, Westerville Symphony

As we close up the summer, many of us are finishing up our big projects. I am happy to be one of them! The Beethoven 5k, which was hosted this past Sunday, July 30th, was a success!

The days leading up to the 5k were busy–preparing last minute donations and swag bags for the runners and scheduling all of our marketing and social media ahead of time–not to mention the 5AM start-time on Sunday!

I was very excited to see all of the hard work I have put in this summer come to fruition, and I’m pleased to say that we reached out goal of 100 runners! This is an increase of over 15% from last year, so I’m very thrilled that we were able to cross the 100 threshold and reach more people with information about the symphony.

The race itself was wonderful–beautiful morning weather, classical music ringing throughout the park, and plenty of family and friends joining together to run the 5k. It seems as though many people were running the race for the first time, which is a success in more than one way. Not only did we attract new runners, but the chance that they will return next year is higher as well!

Even though I will not be with the Westerville Symphony next year, I hope that I have had some impact on the future success of the event, whether by creating community partnerships, designing marketing materials, or something else.

The next two weeks will involve a lot of wrap up, follow-up, and general reflection as my fellowship comes to an end. I am very grateful for the opportunity to learn from both The Columbus Foundation and the Westerville Symphony, and I hope that I will be able to take the lessons I have learned and apply them in my future career.

Thanks for reading, and make sure to join the Westerville Symphony next year at the Beethoven 5k!