Two weeks down already. It is going by so fast. The organization that I am working with, Brilliant Detroit, still continues to amaze me. I’m thankful everyday that I was placed here this summer. Brilliant Detroit is an organization whose mission is to create “Kid Success Neighborhoods” by building high quality early childhood experiences.We see families and community as essential partners in the development of young children (ages 0-8), so we help connect families to the supports that they need in order to foster an environment where children become ready for Kindergarten and ready to thrive in the rest of the world. The best part of it is that Brilliant brings these familial supports and resources right into residential areas. Brilliant holds focus groups and listening sessions in communities all around the city. Once a community agrees that they would like Brilliant Detroit to come into their community, Brilliant purchases a vacant home in the neighborhood, renovates it, and turns it into a space where neighbors can come and gain access to information and resources that they may not otherwise be able to receive.
Brilliant Detroit is a relatively new organization, with its first home opening in 2015. With that being said, there is still much to do on the organizational and logistical side of things. My biggest project right now is creating organizing plans for Brilliant’s current two locations, and their third location set to open in just a couple of weeks. When I was assigned this task I was very nervous because literally, I’ve never even organized a small event, let alone a whole systemized process for starting up a successful community organization. It is definitely a new and challenging experience for me, but I am learning quickly and continuing to get feedback on my drafts and hopefully will be able to leave Brilliant with a strong framework for getting new Brilliant homes up, running, and ready to create neighborhoods where kids have a much high chance to succeed.
In the coming weeks I will work on family intake and evaluation, which is where the research comes in for me. We have families take an initial survey to assess their needs and refer them to programming and services offered in our homes based of that. The intake process is super interesting to me because once we are able to really get going on recruiting families and following up on them I know the research and findings we get from our performance metrics may change the world.
I love my work because I feel like what I am doing for the organization really matters. I am honored to be a part of the beginning of something so great, something that I know will have an incredible impact on the lives of the families that get involved.Years and years down the road I am positive my greatest memory of Summer 2016 will be the relationships that I was able to build with my co-workers at Brilliant. The people I work with are absolutely incredible. All of them are such amazing and passionate people, and work diligently to ensure that the mission of the organization is accomplished. I love and appreciate how we always work collaboratively as a team, inevitably innovating and creating plans to get things done. All of us are very excited to put our plans into action, to go out and meet the people in the community, and hopefully help them in any way that we can.
Two weeks down already. Can’t wait to see what the next 8 weeks bring.
