By the numbers, for the people

To give you can idea of the amount of communication that is involved in my AmeriCorps*VISTA position, here is a summary in numbers:

• Average number of emails sent daily: 28
• Average number of emails received daily: 15
• Number of phone calls (incoming and outgoing combined): 3-15 (depending on meetings and trainings where I can't answer my phone)
• Average number of in person meetings/outreach per week: 4 (this doesn't count all day trainings)

I do at least one training a week in Franklin County, this week I had a second training in Clark County, meaning I trained a total of 17 people in my region just this week to be counselors.   I also got two new site notifications this week, our network is growing so fast!

Granted I am working in Franklin County so I most likely have to field more communication than some other regions, but can you imagine how many lives my program is touching if all 12 other people in my position across Ohio are communicating about the same amount with people in their regions?

Then I think about all the people who aren't being connected.  Despite all of our efforts, there are still plenty of people out there who are struggling to get by, who are eligible for assistance, yet they aren't accessing the programs that can give them a step up to self-sufficiency.

The challenge in the coming months is not to see how many more people I can meet, how many more emails I can send, or how many outreach events I can attend, but rather to communicate with the right people, strategize in appropriate ways, and attend the most relevant outreach events to get as many people connected as possible.  What is the point of putting effort into a new site if they don't have the capacity to serve clients? It's so easy to get pulled into the numbers game, talking about numbers of new sites and numbers of counselors, but it's so important the our focus here at my organization stays on how many clients we are helping through the system.

I am working on outreach strategies for some of my more rural counties, do my readers have any ideas about how you would like to see the efforts to connect low-income Ohioans to public benefits mobilized and utilized?