11/23/09
These past few days have gone by really fast. First, we’ve been dealing with some interesting changes in our living arrangements. We started out living in the “Fellowship Hall” of the church, which is a pretty big room that has a kitchen and bathroom attached to it. Aside form the challenge of have one toilet for 11 people, having to move everything onto the stage on Monday nights for karate classes, and having a door that leads directly to a shady alley, the living situation as pretty sweet. Well, all day Friday we painted the entire room, which required 2 coats and still didn’t look quite as good as we would have liked. Because of this, we stayed at the parish intern’s house, made dinner with them, and watched a movie. When we came back to the church the next morning, we found that they were using it for food distribution. In the next 30 minutes, people would be able to move around in our living quarters without us there. So, we did a quick venue change and moved into another room affectionately called “the Cave” in which we’re now living.
We spent this weekend kicking around LA and taking in some of the sites. We stopped by the La Brea Tar Pits, hung out at the Grove in Hollywood and spent Sunday at Hermosa Beach. I went for a run down the road along the beach, and it was like running through the album cover from Everything in Transit. Beautiful beach and palm trees to the left, immaculate little beach houses on the right and the mountains out in front.
Today we went to the Loyola Marymount University library to do research on after school programs. That library is shwanky. Brand new iMacs everywhere, flat screen LCDs and little computers outside of the study rooms that display the online reservation information and availability for each room. I spent most of the day posted up the study room reading over a book called “Building Effective After School Programs.” Basically, it was a review of successful and/or promising after school programs with different goals and contexts, as well as methodological advise based on various research literature and a step-by-step guideline for building a program from scratch. It seems like the most challenging parts are going to be finding facilities and qualified tutors/teachers to run the academic portion of the programming. Tuesday we’ll be doing more work along those lines and trying to develop some contacts and partnerships to get this thing going. We also have a few side projects coming down the pipe, including some work with the missions that work on Skid Row. They’re putting on an event called “Project Homeless Connect,” which is basically a fair that helps to put the 82,000 homeless people in Los Angeles in contact with the various service organization, legal advise and medical resources that are available in the area. Exciting stuff!
It’s in interesting experience having almost no privacy at all. I’m living with 10 other people that I really enjoy being with most of the time, but every once in a while alone time is very valuable. I’m finding that sitting and reading a book for 30 minutes feels like a luxury. I guess that’s part of Amerilife, and I’m managing alright so far. I’m really looking forward to having some Americorps friends over for Thanksgiving, then heading up to San Francisco for Nims’ wedding.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
First Days in Inglewood
We made it to Inglewood! Green 2 rolled out of Sacramento at 6:15 AM on Monday and arrived at Chapel of Peace Lutheran Church at 2:30 in the afternoon. We started off with a quick meeting with Pastor Brian Eklund, one of the pastors that works with New City Parish, then got settled into our accommodations. We’re staying in a meeting room beneath the preschool facilities that the church rents out to a Head Start program. One of the best parts about the housing situation is that we have tons of space, and there are preschool age kids running around the playground most of the day.
Yesterday we had our first full day of orientation. We met with Willa the office manager, Pastor Scott Fritz and Kris, who is a seminarian and intern at the church. We talked with Pastor Brian about the history of Inglewood and the community here. Inglewood was a middle class white neighborhood until the 70s when more African-Americans moved in and most of the white residents left (white flight). Since then more and more Latinos, as well as other immigrant populations, have moved to Inglewood. There are large Belizean, San Salvadorean, Haitian and West African populations in Inglewood as well. In the afternoon we walked around the neighborhood to get a feeling for the community. Several people stopped to talk to us while we were wearing our Americorps uniforms to ask us what we were about, and some were even former Americorps members. One gentleman, named Sam, was an Americorps VISTA member and we recruited him to help troubleshoot the computer lab at the church school.
Today we went over to Ascension Lutheran and helped do food distribution at My Friend’s House, a home owned by the church and used for food distribution and nursing services. A bilingual nurse was available, as well as several other volunteers to distribute the food. Abby and I helped get people signed up for the Christmas Children’s Toy Drive that the church was preparing. It was amazing how many people showed up for the food. About 140 people in all showed up, and many of them arrived before 6 AM for distribution that started at 9 AM. It was great getting to talk to people about the toy drive, especially since many of the women that came through were either not comfortable speaking English, or spoke only Spanish. It gave me great satisfaction to be able to communicate with them and help them sign their children up to receive gifts, as well as helping with instructions regarding the food that they were receiving.
In the afternoon we went to First Lutheran (another NCP church) and helped with a community meal. Actually, we ended up being served and just eating with the people there because the women that made the food insisted on serving us. She made huge helpings of potato salad, seasoned chicken, homemade refried beans, salad and rice. After eating with the people that came, we talked with the woman who prepared the meal about another ministry that she does. Speaking in Spanish, she told us about how she came into the church and one day saw some migrant workers waiting outside of a Home Depot. She saw how desperate they were for work, and wanted to help them a bit. She started making and distributing burritos for the workers around Inglewood on Thursdays, starting off with about 55 burritos each week and working her way up to 200 burritos currently.
In addition to all the community orientation that we’ve been doing, we’re starting to get a better idea of what we’ll be doing and how we’re going to accomplish it. The pastor at First Lutheran Church showed us a room that a volunteer set up for an after school program that fell through when funding dried up. However we end up doing this, we have to make sure that it’s not strongly dependent on grant funding (which comes and goes), and that there is enough community interest to make it sustainable. Whether that means that our role will be to set up an infrastructure and contacts through which others can continue to develop the program or actually putting together a curriculum, we’ve got a lot of work to do. Fortunately, the pastors and staff members here have good knowledge of many of the services around us, and I’ve been able to find several after school programs that I’ll be contacting to learn more about how these kinds of programs get off the ground and how they function once they’re running. This should be interesting!
Yesterday we had our first full day of orientation. We met with Willa the office manager, Pastor Scott Fritz and Kris, who is a seminarian and intern at the church. We talked with Pastor Brian about the history of Inglewood and the community here. Inglewood was a middle class white neighborhood until the 70s when more African-Americans moved in and most of the white residents left (white flight). Since then more and more Latinos, as well as other immigrant populations, have moved to Inglewood. There are large Belizean, San Salvadorean, Haitian and West African populations in Inglewood as well. In the afternoon we walked around the neighborhood to get a feeling for the community. Several people stopped to talk to us while we were wearing our Americorps uniforms to ask us what we were about, and some were even former Americorps members. One gentleman, named Sam, was an Americorps VISTA member and we recruited him to help troubleshoot the computer lab at the church school.
Today we went over to Ascension Lutheran and helped do food distribution at My Friend’s House, a home owned by the church and used for food distribution and nursing services. A bilingual nurse was available, as well as several other volunteers to distribute the food. Abby and I helped get people signed up for the Christmas Children’s Toy Drive that the church was preparing. It was amazing how many people showed up for the food. About 140 people in all showed up, and many of them arrived before 6 AM for distribution that started at 9 AM. It was great getting to talk to people about the toy drive, especially since many of the women that came through were either not comfortable speaking English, or spoke only Spanish. It gave me great satisfaction to be able to communicate with them and help them sign their children up to receive gifts, as well as helping with instructions regarding the food that they were receiving.
In the afternoon we went to First Lutheran (another NCP church) and helped with a community meal. Actually, we ended up being served and just eating with the people there because the women that made the food insisted on serving us. She made huge helpings of potato salad, seasoned chicken, homemade refried beans, salad and rice. After eating with the people that came, we talked with the woman who prepared the meal about another ministry that she does. Speaking in Spanish, she told us about how she came into the church and one day saw some migrant workers waiting outside of a Home Depot. She saw how desperate they were for work, and wanted to help them a bit. She started making and distributing burritos for the workers around Inglewood on Thursdays, starting off with about 55 burritos each week and working her way up to 200 burritos currently.
In addition to all the community orientation that we’ve been doing, we’re starting to get a better idea of what we’ll be doing and how we’re going to accomplish it. The pastor at First Lutheran Church showed us a room that a volunteer set up for an after school program that fell through when funding dried up. However we end up doing this, we have to make sure that it’s not strongly dependent on grant funding (which comes and goes), and that there is enough community interest to make it sustainable. Whether that means that our role will be to set up an infrastructure and contacts through which others can continue to develop the program or actually putting together a curriculum, we’ve got a lot of work to do. Fortunately, the pastors and staff members here have good knowledge of many of the services around us, and I’ve been able to find several after school programs that I’ll be contacting to learn more about how these kinds of programs get off the ground and how they function once they’re running. This should be interesting!
Thursday, November 12, 2009
CTI Conclusion and Project
Well, I know a lot more about my project now. We were given a bunch of paperwork to fill out for our team positions and asked to prepare a briefing for the staff and Support Team Leaders (STLs)about the project. I am the Physical Training Coordinator as well as the Service Learning Initiator, so I get to plan and lead PT as well as look for and organize opportunities to learn about the community and the social issues that our team is addressing.
For our project we'll be working with New City Parish (NCP) in Inglewood, CA. NCP is a coalition of 12 parishes of the Evangelical Lutheran CHurch in America that formed after the civil unrest in 1992 relating to the Rodney King verdict. They decided to come together in order to address the underlying issues of poverty, gang violence, unemployment and racial tension that led to the violence that South Central Los Angeles experienced. They address many issues, but focus mostly on education, employment and poverty. They run after school programs for youth, raise money to pay teachers, purchase computers, run a micro-lending service, hold classes on financial management and run a food bank, among other things. Our team will be working to supplement the after school program for at-risk youth and helping at the food bank as well as fostering community involvement. The after school program is especially Important in this neighborhood because gnag violence is a serious problem, and these programs help give kids the confidence and tools to avoid gang affiliation.
With that said, I'm pretty much done with CTI. Tomorrow we have our induction ceremony and are made official members of NCCC. I'll be driving down to Inglewood with my team on Monday, and then we'll start orientation and work on Tuesday. This is going to be a very challenging project, not only because of the problems that these kids face and the mission of the project, but also because I've never lived in an inner city environment before. Hopefully I can get out there, get involved in the culture, and have a great time getting things done!
For our project we'll be working with New City Parish (NCP) in Inglewood, CA. NCP is a coalition of 12 parishes of the Evangelical Lutheran CHurch in America that formed after the civil unrest in 1992 relating to the Rodney King verdict. They decided to come together in order to address the underlying issues of poverty, gang violence, unemployment and racial tension that led to the violence that South Central Los Angeles experienced. They address many issues, but focus mostly on education, employment and poverty. They run after school programs for youth, raise money to pay teachers, purchase computers, run a micro-lending service, hold classes on financial management and run a food bank, among other things. Our team will be working to supplement the after school program for at-risk youth and helping at the food bank as well as fostering community involvement. The after school program is especially Important in this neighborhood because gnag violence is a serious problem, and these programs help give kids the confidence and tools to avoid gang affiliation.
With that said, I'm pretty much done with CTI. Tomorrow we have our induction ceremony and are made official members of NCCC. I'll be driving down to Inglewood with my team on Monday, and then we'll start orientation and work on Tuesday. This is going to be a very challenging project, not only because of the problems that these kids face and the mission of the project, but also because I've never lived in an inner city environment before. Hopefully I can get out there, get involved in the culture, and have a great time getting things done!
Monday, November 9, 2009
Yosemite
Yosemite was AMAZING! Dan (another CM) and I planned out the weekend and recruited a group of 13 people to head down for the weekend. On Friday night we stayed at a lodge in El Portal, which is located about 45 minutes from Camp 4 at the base of Yosemite Falls. We all loaded up and drove down around 5, so most of the driving was at night. Heading through Mariposa I got caught in a speed trap and was pulled ove. The officer asked where I was going and if I had been drinking. I gave him the right answers, and then he noticed my NCCC ID in my wallet. A moment of terror turned into a CAPping opportunity, and I gave the officer the whole rap about what Americorps NCCC is and what we were doing. After that he told me to have a nice night and sent me on my way. I love Americorps.
The next morning we got going round 8:30 and got into the campsite a little after 9. It was a first come first served kind of deal, so we had to wait around for a while to get a site as people left. When it’s 35 degrees outside, waiting around for a campsite can be interesting. We eventually got a site, got settled in, and prepared to go on our hike for the day. We settled on Upper Yosemite Falls, which is a 7 mile round trip with 2700 ft of elevation gain. We hiked a long series of switchbacks, around the base of an enormous granite cliff, then up another long series of switchbacks to reach the top of Yosemite Falls.
Although everyone was pretty tired when we got to the top, it was absolutely worth it. The view of Half Dome and the valley from the top was incredible. I’m pretty sure that my dad would have hated it, because you could look out over the ledge at a 2000 ft drop down to the valley floor with basically nothing to stop you from falling. We bouldered around up there for a while, and just sat around enjoying the cold breeze and the great views. Coming back down with all of these friends to whom I felt so close after only a few weeks was a great feeling. I think that that hike will go down as one the great experiences of my adult life.
We arrived back at camp right around sunset and started to get dinner going. Being the broke Americorps members that we are, dinner consisted of chips, salsa, goldfish and hotdogs around a fire. As the night wound down we crawled – freezing our butts off – into the tents. In the morning we got up and “mustered” (a buzzword around campus) to decide what we were going to do for the day. The consensus (another buzzword) was that we should drive to the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir on our way back to Sacramento. So we all caravanned out of the valley, stopping to take a picture or two at the Valley View pullout, and onward to Hetch Hetchy.
The reservoir is a pretty cool place. From the dam you can see huge granite cliffs and the trickle of waterfalls that gush during the spring and summer. Hetch Hetchy was dammed in the early 20th century to provide clean drinking water to the Bay Area. It provides 85% of the water supply for 2.4 million people in and around San Francisco, and the pipelines that move it are powered completely by gravity. After walking around for a while we headed back to the cars and began the long, windy drive home. Of course, no road trip would complete without introducing two of my fellow corps members to the glory of In-N-Out burger, even if it was in Modesto.
The trip was an overall great experience. Being able to plan and execute a trip with 13 people, having a blast hiking and camping, and getting to spend time with people that I feel so close too even though I’ve hardly known them for a month was very fulfilling. Hopefully I can look back on that weekend when I’m having a hard time in this next year and draw some strength from the enjoyment that I felt.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Day of Service 3
Today we had another Day of Service. We worked with the Sacramento Tree Foundation at a National Wildlife Refuge in Elk Grove. We removed rotten wood, cleared an area of brush about the size of a football field using a brush mower, and laid irrigation line to prepare the area for tree planting. The area is used as a stopping place by many migratory birds, and the environment used to have lots of trees near the lakes. However, with human activity and the introduction of beavers into the area, the trees around the ponds that the birds rest in have mostly disappeared. Another team is going to be coming back tomorrow to finish planting the oaks and cottonwoods that we prepared.
Project Reveal!
Last night we found out what our project is going to be! Our team will be working in Inglewood, CA with New City Parish, a coalition of nine parishes of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), to develop and implement an after school program for kids in the inner city at three different schools. We’ll be living in our own 3 bedroom house in Inglewood and working in schools in the areas as well as in Compton. We’ll be leaving to drive down there on November 16th and ending the project on January 28th, with a break from December 18th to January 4th. As far as the project goes, that’s really all I know. We’ll be doing more research and starting to develop our plan during the next week and then leaving next Monday. It’s kind of crazy to think that CTI is almost over and that I’ll be starting my first project in a little over a week. Awesome!
Camp Mendocino
Camp Mendocino was awesome! Our team saddled up in the vans and headed out to Mendocino. After our 4 hour car drive we arrived at Camp Mendocino and unloaded our things into the open air cabins and started our unit training. We watched a movie and then got some time to talk with our Unit Leader about herself. Little did any of us know, she grew up in Mexico and the jungles of Peru because her parents were both missionaries. She told us all about her pet monkeys, growing up next to a lake in the Amazon, and about her career at Americorps.
Camp Mendocino is run by the Boys and Girls Club of San Francisco and hosts 1000+ children every summer for 10 day camps. For the last 10 years, Americorps NCCC teams have been going up there during the fall to do projects that help maintain the buildings and equipment so that they can offer the camp at little or no cost. During our 4 days there we did a project clearing brush form the side of one of the access rodes, but also got to do team-building exercises, a ropes course, sit around the campfire, explore the redwood forest, and do PT at 5:30 AM two of the mornings. It was a great experience, not just because of the natural beauty of Mendocino and the service that we were able to provide, but also as a forum to get to know my teammates a little better. We’ve been together for two weeks now, and I’m starting to feel like I know them. Overall, a pretty cool trip and a nice break from trainings.
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