I Know When That Hotline Bling….It’s Probably my Supervisor Calling to Give Me More Work

               The community organization I am working for this summer is Focus Hope. Focus Hope calls itself and anchor Institution for the neighborhood they are located in. An anchor institution is an institution that has been around for a very long time and has leverage and say in what happens in the community. Focus hope has really great programs for people who need help with food, job assistance ,and child care. The biggest program is their food service program which services 48000 people every month. Focus hope mission statement is “Recognizing the dignity and beauty of every person, we pledge intelligent and practical action to overcome racism, poverty, and injustice. And to build a metropolitan community where all people may live in freedom, harmony, trust and affection. Black and white, yellow, brown and red from Detroit and its suburbs of every economic status, national origin and religious persuasion we join in this covenant.”. I truly believe that the people who work at Focus Hope believe in this Mission. I really like the part where they recognize the dignity and beauty in every person. A lot of organizations  that claim to help people forget about the humanity of people they are helping,  and that those people deserve to be treated with dignity.

                    I am working with the Workforce Development in the Job Seeker Boot Camp. Since my supervisors or not at work for the first week of the DCBRP I was kind of floating in the wind when it came to doing actual work. I was giving myself assignments, and doing what I thought was best for the program.  I developed pre and post surveys so I could have some data to work with when trying to figure out  why class enrollment was low. It was kind of weird because the class this summer is a very large class.  Usually the class average is around 7 or 8 people, but this summer the class has around 15 or 16 people in it. Now that my supervisors are back in the office and working with me I have a much better understanding of what I’m supposed to do and the results they would like to see my work provide. My first goal is to  still focus on how we can improve enrollment, but I also got additional I guess work goes this week. My second goal is going to be to figure out Outreach for the program. I have to connect a lot of Outreach calendars between Focus Hope’s different programs, like the food program and the Hope Village initiative, to make sure that when they go and do Outreach Job Seeker Boot Camp can have  a person who is knowledgeable about the program and/or materials at the Outreach. My final goal would be to help my supervisor with the actual class. My entire family is full of teachers and it seems like as hard as I try to get away from teaching I can’t outrun it. The class Is full of different types of people which I think is really interesting and it really says a lot about the state of the economy we live in and also the world we live in. There are people with master’s degrees, bachelor’s degrees, and some people who have just gotten out of prison  using job Seeker boot camp so they can  during the skills they need to become employed.

              I would say my first week in Detroit was pretty standard. I really enjoyed getting to know the people in this cohort.  I guess I would have to say that the highlight of my week was trivia. I learned a lot about the people I went to trivia with and I got to go to a place that I had never been to before. I look forward to more spontaneous outings and field trips with the people I am living with this summer.