A quick recap

The past few days have been pretty busy with a variety of activities. Normally, I don't like to use blog space for a run-down of tasks completed (unless the story is really entertaining), but I want you to get an idea of what I've been up to over the past few days.

Monday was mostly spent catching up on odds and ends around the office. In the afternoon, though, I accompanied Holli to Hamilton High School to meet with 3 teachers/administrators about a district-wide food drive. The project was coined "Fill that bus!" modeled after Ty Pennington's famous line on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The basic idea is that each of the 15 or 16 schools in the district will collect canned goods and non-perishable food items over the course of a month in January 2010. Some student groups had already generated several fun ideas to accomplish this goal, including holding contests between schools and encouraging community members to donate at sporting events. At the end of the month, the students will load the goods into a line of school buses, filling the seats with items. The buses will then parade through the district before stopping at Shared Harvest to be unloaded and weighed. So far, the students and administrators are energized and full of ideas on how to market the food drive, and we will do everything we can on our end to facilitate a successful food drive.

The idea for the "Fill that bus!" food drive originally came from the Beavercreek City School District, so we are excited to see how this plays out in Hamilton City Schools. Of course, my involvement with Shared Harvest food drives will end after the holiday season, but I am excited to see how this food drive turns out. The district has been very thoughtful about the timing of the food drive, as well. Instead of holding a food drive during the holidays when many people are already giving so much, the district took Tina's advice and decided to do their food drive right after the holiday season when donations and volunteers tend to drop off. Of course, holiday food drives are wonderful, and part of my job is to help facilitate those seasonal food drives! But hunger is a year-long problem, and we don't want to forget about meeting that need when the holidays have ended.

That being said--if your organization would like to hold a food drive this holiday season (or anytime), please, go for it! If you live in the Shared Harvest area (Darke, Miami, Preble, Butler, and Warren Counties) you can contact me or call Holli at 513-874-0114.

So where does the OBB come in this week? Tuesday morning I gave an OBB presentation to potential OBB sites in Montgomery County, while Alex presented to agencies in Greene County. In order to get through rush hour traffic and make it to the presentation on time, I had to leave my apartment at 6:45 A.M. When I arrived at the site over an hour and fifteen minutes later, I set up my presentation, and waited for attendees to show up. And what do you know--about 10 people came to the presentation! A majority of them worked in some capacity with St. Vincent de Paul, but everyone in attendance seemed interested and enthusiastic about the program. (Of course, it's hard not to like how easy the OBB makes benefit applications for our clients!) After the presentation, I stuck around to answer a few questions and then made the drive back to Shared Harvest. Around 12:30 I was surprised by a phone call from one of the presentation attendees already requesting training dates. Talk about enthusiasm! That felt pretty good, especially after having poor attendance rates at our past few presentations.

Tuesday afternoon was spent preparing for an OBB Benefits Training today in Hamilton. For the first time, my commute to the training site was only a few minutes longer than my regular, everyday commute. But the day itself didn't seem like the average day. I only had two counselors signed up to attend, but due to some communication and navigation issues, they arrived at the training 35 minutes late. At times they struggled to understand directions and use the software, and I questioned their interest in the program. After lunch, though, things went much smoother. Both counselors had a lot of questions and comments on the benefit programs housed in the OBB and even tried to challenge me about how low the poverty line is set. I reminded them that I don't make the rules, I just relay them--and not to shoot the messenger, for gods sake! That seemed to help, but I really didn't mind their critique of the programs. It was actually refreshing to see other people get riled up about the bureacracy surrounding many of these benefit programs. I believe that if more people knew how difficult it is to live on such little income, they might actually do something about it through advocacy and policy change. And I guess that's why I'm an AmeriCorps*VISTA member--because I know what it's like to live in poverty and I am doing something about it.