Cut Off

"Based on the current call volume, your hold time is 39 minutes, 11 seconds.  Please hold for the next available representative."  *click*

When I talk about living in solidarity with the people I am serving, I am not joking around.  Despite the fact that I am an educated, literate, capable human being who in fact works for a program that helps people sign up for public benefits and access things like food assistance, if I do not get through to JFS within the next three days, I will loose my food assistance.

ARGGRAGARSRAGAGGGG!!!!!

I even went through a contact I have at JFS to transfer my case from Delaware County.  Since Franklin County is so populated, I am assigned to a different Opportunity Center than where my case got transferred to.  So it's in the right county, I just have to do a Inner County transfer.  I've called at every time of the day and been disconnected due to call volume every time.  I've sternly emailed the center to inform them of this and request a contact that way as well.

It's not working.  I am frustrated.  I have In Service Training for AmeriCorps all day tomorrow, and the next day my mother is dragging my family to Pittsburg to see Celtic Thunder (it's okay Mom, I love them too), so the only time I can go into the office is on the 30th.  The very last day.

If you are a case worker at the North Community Opportunity Center, please call me.  My number is 614.357.6146.  Please give me a chance to interview.  I understand your staff has been cut, your budget has been cut, and more people in the community have been visiting you than ever before because of the state of the economy.  But I am a person.  Who likes to eat.  Let me speak for every other person out there fighting the system and trying to work through all your barriers: give me a chance.  And add more open lines to your phone.  I can wait 40 minutes on hold if it means I can get food assistance for the next 9 months.  Thank you for the work you do.

United Way service day - Mt. Vernon

What does one do on the hottest day in September?  If you answered manual labor outside, shoveling and raking steaming tire shreds around metal playground equipment, you are correct.  You don't win anything though, sorry.  Unless of course you want my sweat drenched T-shirt.  I had to wear it - You get to hear about it.

This was a great event put on by United Way, to kick off their fundraising campaign.  There were residents from all over Mt. Vernon and Knox County, most from businesses like Kroger and Rolls Royce (apparently there is a market for this company in Knox County. Who knew?) that are United Way contributors.  The Central Ohio team (Zach, John and I) were paired with individuals from a couple different organizations to re-spread the tire mulch in the park's playground.

ODJFS Director Douglas Lumpkin's Thoughts

I've finally gotten around to transcribing the chicken scrawl I took during the OBB conference from our keynote speaker.  We were lucky enough to have Douglas Lumpkin, the Director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, to speak to hundreds of counselors and site administrators from across Ohio.  This is a very important relationship, because the Benefit Bank is a direct line for families to JFS's systems, and many times, service agencies have difficulties dealing with the barriers at JFS.  What a great opportunity for Director Lumpkin to speak directly to our partners and for them to hear his ideas and openness to helping the same people they are trying to help.

He started by warning us that

1. I’m not fun
2. I’m not overly profound... but for everyone in the room I have something in common: that is that I care.

He stated that he values "this partnership (between OBB and JFS).  The Gateway (allowing OBB to submit application electronically to JFS system) has been up for 2 years, taken up to 36,000 applications through."

He describe the role of ODJFS as threefold:

1. Develop and implement policy and procedures
2. Pass out lots of $.  ("Lots of people want to talk to us about that.")
3. Maintain information systems

 I will go ahead and just copy some of the most influential statements that he made during his speech.  I enjoyed it and I feel that the attendees also walked away with a more positive perception of ODJFS.  Here are some excerpts:

You can’t effectuate change and policy without IT.  A real player in this environment, the Benefit Bank is a  platform on the IT platform. 

Challenge:  Help them (they new face of poverty coming in to get help) understand there is no embarrassment in this world.  Individuals coming in that gave help, are now getting help. 

I don’t know that our goal should be to make you desperately poor before we help you.  (Applause)  

We need to have conversations about self-sufficiency and sustainability.  This recession had pointed out one thing about self-sufficiency is really ONE things with three letters: J-O-B.  No one is going to get rich off our SEP program (Subsidized Employment Program).  But we have to give people a chance to start somewhere.

This is one of the worst recessions there’s ever been.  30% cut at JFS, less $, fewer people than we’ve ever had (working).  We need to make sure there’s a clear understanding: in the face of it all, that you can still move forward in a direction to help people.  Do we need more resources?  Absolutely!  Do what we can, where we are, with what we’ve got.

We have to meet people where they’re at.  The conversation that goes beyond this room.  I know you (attendees) work with people in the deepest throes in challenges in trying to make it to the next day.  We're having the same conversation with …community colleges.  So we’re in a positive to help both those who want to get back to work quickly AND help people who have a longer horizon. 

I believe that as a community partners you play a valuable role in meeting people where they’re at.  You help people navigate various systems.  We at JFS are about to embark on bringing up self-service application, similar to what the OBB is turning to.  This is absolutely not competing with the Benefit Bank.  We're taking the vision of meeting people where they’re at.  (remember:) “Everyone’s not at your shop!"

If two people always agree, one of them is always unnecessary.  And I believe everyone in the room is necessary.  Disagreement doesn’t change reality, the ability to have real dialogue about solving real problems.  And I don’t need to demagogue your ideal because I can’t agree.  And I can respect where you come from: you want to help people.

I am open to conversations and ideas that you might have.  My role as director really isn’t to direct, but to enable (community partners).

My philosophy of meeting people where they’re at: Think of call centers (as a way to access public benefits).  So impersonal!  A case worker said to me “you expect a 76 year old who needs Medicaid to do it over the phone?"  I said absolutely not.  I expect that we allow a 22 year old with 2 children to do it over the phone so they don’t have to get on a bus and drag two kids there, don’t have to spend time, so we CAN spend time with 76 year old person.

(Philosophy behind changing how JFS offers services:)

1. There is more than enough need to go around
2.  Meet people where they’re at (some people prefer personal)
3. We don't have any $, so find most efficient way to help people

Not trying to replace personal situations with people who need assistance.  Some people, who if you just point, will make it there.  Enable the world for them too.

Director Lumpkin closed with a telling of the "Starfish Story", and ended with 

In resources/budget issues, be the boy on the beach (in the story), recognize that if you are making a difference to the family in front of you.

Hunger Action Month

Did you know it's Hunger Action Month?

I bet you are know fervently saying to yourself "Oh boy!  What can I do to tell out my neighbors who are going without sufficient food at this time?"

I'm so glad you inquired!  Hop on over to the Central Ohio blog, where you can read about five different things to do.  I cannot post, and will not suggest, the last one on the list.  If you are not an AmeriCorps*VISTA, feel free to take action on #5 if you so desire.

http://obbservationsco.blogspot.com/2010/09/5-ways-to-get-involved-hunger-action.html

Exlporing the Central Ohio Blog

Is it weird that I do things like this in my free time? Probably.

This is a Prezi I made to help people in Central Ohio understand what's on our blog. Click through slowly, I've heard people get sea sick in prezi presentations :-)

Please excuse the pixelated images, this was thrown together for fun.

Just click the gray arrow at the bottom of the presentation to get started, and then keep clicking it to step through the show.

OBB in Central ohio on Prezi

http://obbservationsco.blogspot.com/

Friends of the Homeless direct service

In line with many other Americans (http://www.911dayofservice.org/) this week, the VISTA's from Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks took a day off from our regular work yesterday and did a day of direct service in honor of September 11th.   I think it's fantastic that the silver lining of that fateful day has turned into an annual effort of community service.  Solidarity to build our community is such a powerful response to an act that was probably meant to tear us apart and riddle us with fear.

Friends of the Homeless is the name of the shelter organization that my group worked in.  I was in the men's shelter component, another group worked at Rebecca's place which serves as the women's shelter.  They also have transitional housing and supportive permanent housing available.  See here for more information.  Considering the Benefit Bank has most other needs covered (food, medical, school) it was a great chance for me to play a part in housing residents of Columbus.

The cold weather is right around the corner, so the shelters are gearing up for the overflow of residents in the winter months.  It was a pretty smelly, dirty place as soon as we walked in, so our main job to to clean the best we could for a fresh start.  The living quarters are open floor spaces with single beds and bunks, with lockers up against the wall, and dorm style bathrooms.  We tackled the bathrooms and the floors/walls of the sleeping quarters.

Gloves on, masks on, sponge in hand.  Buckets of bleach, pine sol, and comet.  I have no idea how walls can get so dirty.  This is one of those situations where you cannot think about what you're doing, you just have to dig in and do it.  Like cleaning unidentifiable splashes of substances off the well.  Well, one of the workers pointed out that "You can probably identify what's on there...you just don't want to."  Well said.

It's always a humbling experience to do this type of extreme service work.  It's gross, it's involved, but it's also short term.  At the end of the day I get to leave and return to my apartment.  At the end of the same day, the residents will come back to a room that smells overwhelmingly of cleaning supplies, but is still very obviously dirtied with years of street grit and stained with stories of men who have lost their footing in life.

Helping, Fixing, or Serving by Rachel Naomi Remen, MD

Thanks to my good friend Adam Harris (@adamharris_), my fellow AmeriCorps*VISTA friends and I were alerted to this article about service vs. help.  Please visit the original article posted on Soul Flares at the following address.  I also posted the text below.  What do the readers think about service or helping?


http://www.soulflares.org/index.php?main_page=document_general_info&products_id=327

In recent years the question how can I help? has become meaningful to many people. But perhaps there is a deeper question we might consider. Perhaps the real question is not how can I help? but how can I serve?

Serving is different from helping. Helping is based on inequality; it is not a relationship between equals. When you help you use your own strength to help those of lesser strength. If I'm attentive to what's going on inside of me when I'm helping, I find that I'm always helping someone who's not as strong as I am, who is needier than I am. People feel this inequality. When we help we may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give them; we may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity and wholeness. When I help I am very aware of my own strength. But we don't serve with our strength, we serve with ourselves. We draw from all of our experiences. Our limitations serve, our wounds serve, even our darkness can serve. The wholeness is us serves the darkness in others and the wholeness in life.
Helping incurs debt. When you help someone they owe you one. But serving, like healing, is mutual. There is no debt. I am as served as the person I am serving. When I help I have a feeling of satisfaction. When I serve I have a feeling of gratitude. These are very different things.

Serving is also different from fixing. When I fix a person I perceive them as broken, and their brokenness requires me to act. When I fix I do not see the wholeness in the other person or trust the integrity of the life in them. When I serve I see and trust that wholeness. It is what I am responding to and collaborating with.

There is a distance between ourselves and whatever or whomever we are fixing. Fixing is a form of judgement. All judgement creates distance, a disconnection, an experience of difference. In fixing there is an inequality of expertise that can easily become a moral distance. We cannot serve at a distance. We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected, that which we are willing to touch. This is Mother Teresa's basic message. We serve life not because it is broken but because it is holy.

If helping is an experience of strength, fixing is an experience of mastery and expertise. Service, on the other hand, is an experience of mystery, surrender and awe. A fixer has the illusion of being casual. A server knows that he or she is being used and has a willingness to be used in the service of something greater, something essentially unknown. Fixing and helping are very personal; they are very particular, concrete and specific. We fix and help many different things in our lifetimes, but when we serve we are always serving the same thing. Everyone who has ever served through the history of time serves the same thing. We are servers of the wholeness and mystery of life.

The bottom line, of course, is that we can fix without serving. And we can help without serving. And we can serve without fixing or helping. I think I would go so far as to say that fixing and helping may often be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul. They may look similar if you're watching from the outside, but the inner experience is different. The outcome is often different, too.

Our service serves us as well as others. That which uses us strengthens us. Over time we burn out. Service is renewing. When we serve, our work itself will sustain us.
Service rests on the basic premise that the nature of life is sacred, that life is sacred, that life is a holy mystery which has an unknown purpose. When we serve, we know that we belong to life and to that purpose. Fundamentally, helping, fixing, and service are ways of seeing life. When you help you see life as weak, when you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. For the perspective of service, we are all connected: All suffering is like my suffering and all joy is like my joy. The impulse to serve emerges naturally and inevitably from this way of seeing.

Lastly, fixing and helping are the basis of curing, but not of healing. In 40 years of chronic illness I have been helped by many people and fixed by a great many others who did not recognize my wholeness. All that fixing and helping left me wounded in some important and fundamental ways. Only service heals. 

Rachel Naomi Remen, In the Service of Life, Noetic Sciences Review, Spring 1996. This was edited from a speech given by Ms. Remen at the 1996 Temple award ceremony. Ms. Remen with her husband, won a McArthur Award for their work with Commonweal, a holistic cancer treatment facility in Bolinas California and is a professor of medicine.

Counselor Trainings: An Inside Look

In order to fully understand how a counselor/client (Neighbors Helping Neighbors!) session goes with the Benefit Bank, the last part of my new counselor trainings include a simulation.  One trainee plays the counselor, one plays the client, and they are instructed to "treat it like a real client simulation, practicing the conversation you would use."

My weekly entertainment most certainly comes from this part of my training.

I sit off to the side, answering random questions but trying to offer little guidance, as counselors won't have me a resource outside the training (teaching self sufficiency even with counselors).

Here is what I get to experience:

• Counselors making up meanings (incorrect) for program acronyms, trying to help other counselors
• Developing accents
• Refusing to give information
• Give different answers than on the script, make up elaborate stories about medical problems and bills
  act confused/are confused
• Use frequent curses at the program (current counselor says every 5 seconds: "Well, poop! Why did it do that?")
• Counselor finds out other couselor works at a place that's essentially a soup kitchen.  "Wait, you serve free food? Every day? Anyone can come? ...Where are you located again?"
• "Oh my goodness, there's more to fill out?!?  She is going to starve to death in the time it takes to fill out this application!"

Tune in for more entertaining and candid experiences with the Benefit Bank.