Friends of Parkside is a non-profit community organization dedicated to bettering the lives of the residents in The Villages of Parkside community, located on Detroit’s Eastside. After being with the organization for about two weeks now, it is clear that the members of the organization are 110% dedicated to achieving their goals of maintaining a safe, healthy, and informed community. In the short time that I have been with FOP, I have been fortunate enough to participate in an Infant Safe Sleep class, specifically for the Parkside community, hosted by the Detroit Health Department. I learned a lot from the class and based on the evaluations and post-tests, many of the participants did also. This is just one example of the many projects that Friends of Parkside help organize for residents.
I am in the process of organizing an advisory committee for the Dear Santa Project. The purpose of the project is to assess the short and long term impact of the Dear Santa Program that is similar to most “adopt a family” programs during Christmas time. Initially, I was anxious about organizing the committee because I have not been introduced to many of the residents and I assumed most people would not want to participate. Fortunately, I was all wrong. Earlier today, I found out that the board will include more people than I originally accounted for. I am equally excited and nervous about our first meeting. I can’t wait to get to know more of the Parkside residents.
Establishing communities while in a virtual setting is still something that I think is challenging. I could be overthinking it like I do most things, but it is just hard for me to imagine. With that being said, I don’t believe building a strong relationship with other DCERP fellows will be impossible. I definitely think that having frequent meetings where we are given the space to share our ideas freely has a major impact on the growth of our community. Normally it takes me a while to open up to new people I meet, so I expect that same from myself in this situation; however, knowing my personality, I am putting extra effort in speeding up that process. Slowly but surely, I want to continue making long lasting connections in DCERP.
