East Falls, Here I Come

Aftermath of storage

I know I didn't post last week, but to be completely honest, it was extremely uneventful and I don't remember most of what happened. Thursday and Friday were the most eventful days since we were at storage, checking paint and doing inventory of it. It was nice to get out of the office and have conversations with each other that might not have usually happened in the office. I'd say it was a pretty good bonding experience for the CE team. Oh, and I didn't get hurt this time, so that was a huge plus.

This past week went by extremely fast, most likely because we had a lot going on. On Monday, half of the team assisted at the Philadelphia School District Building while the other half (which I was part of) spent the day at the office.

View at East Falls station

When I arrived, my Program Manager (PM) informed me that I will be the point person for the SEPTA project this year. Every year, the CE team works with SEPTA to enhance a station, usually within the city. This year, however, SEPTA asked the CE team to help out at a regional rail station in East Falls. We scoped out the location and then my PM had a meeting to see what SEPTA was looking for. When he returned, he informed me that SEPTA wants a mural in the underground hallway that leads between the inbound and outbound sides of the station. He wants to see six different ideas on Monday so I spent the rest of the afternoon researching the area. Apparently Grace Kelly was born in East Falls. Fun fact.

On Tuesday, the team switched places and my half of the team assisted at the School District Building. While taking the Broad Street Line, one of the SEPTA workers saw my City Year jacket and thanked me for my service to the city. It was a great way to start my morning.
When I arrived at the School District Building, I had no idea what I was stepping into, but I was excited to be out of the normal office setting. I was quickly swept into a room with one of my team members to assist with charter school assignments. It was called the Renaissance Room since the charter schools were through a program called Renaissance. Our job was to help families fill out paperwork and call out the next person on the list to meet with someone to help place the students in the next closest school. A lot of families lived in an area where the charter school was their neighborhood school, but there was no room for their student to attend. The school district was in charge of finding a new school for the students to attend. It was a very heated room to be in.
The first family that came in did not even speak English. My team member and I had to use broken Spanish to explain what was happening. The family really appreciated our effort. When it was their turn to speak with someone, they called a translator on the phone to help with the conversation. It was so great that the translator was readily available via phone to assist this family. Apparently this is a very common thing that the school district deals with so they are prepared with the translator company via phone.
Another interesting scenario I ran into was a mother of three who needed help reading and writing the form. She was embarrassed and told me she did not know how to read or write and her mother was unable to come with her to help. I explained the form and filled it out with her. She kept thanking me for all my help, but I didn't really feel as though I did much. It's the little things.
After a hectic morning, my team member and I headed to another room to diffuse some issues. People were not as friendly in this room, but I didn't take any attitudes or anger personally. It was frustrating for everyone. The school district had been working to place 140,000 students in 217 schools all summer and now families were coming in to change things around. There was a lot going on.
At 5:30PM, we finished with the hectic day and were told to meet in the office on Wednesday at 8:30AM (15 minutes later than usual!).

Wednesday was a pretty quick day as well. I spent most of my day working on designs for the SEPTA station. I was able to come up with about nine designs throughout the day. Around 3:15PM, we headed to the Loew's Hotel via trolley. We were going to help set up an Aramark service event for Thursday with Care Force. (Care Force is part of City Year that does really big service events that are usually more labor intensive.)
We spent from 4-6PM doing inventory of ingredients for Rainbow Soup containers that we would be making the next day.

Rainbow Soup

Thursday was the big service day. We started at the Loew's Hotel at 7:45AM and began the containers around 9AM. Each person on the CE team was a captain for an Aramark team and was in charge of overseeing the event. It was difficult to step back and let the team work through their issues and make the containers, but it was a good introduction to many of the service events the CE team will be running throughout the year. After we made over 1800 containers, we cleaned up and broke for lunch. Around 12:30PM, we started loading pallets into the freight elevator and brought them down to the loading dock. We had to stop loading until about 2PM to avoid disrupting a session. We finally finished loading everything around 3:45PM and then finished the rest of our day at the office.

CE Team needs to work on jumping pics...

Why I serve

Friday was AmeriCorps opening day. It was the 20th anniversary of the AmeriCorps programs, too. We started our morning with Unity Rally at the Municipal Services Building to get everyone pumped. We did Physical Training outside and a lot of Philadelphians stopped by to watch. It was a pretty cool experience. After Unity Rally, some of our team went to LOVE park and hung out before grabbing breakfast and heading to the AmeriCorps opening at Benjamin Franklin High School. When we got to the school, we started by watching Bill Clinton and Obama speak about AmeriCorps from the White House. Then, we had people in different AmeriCorps programs talk about why they serve. It was great to have all of the Philly AmeriCorps programs together and to hear about the different experiences.

Inside of a DELL

After the speeches, we had a quick lunch and then headed to an afternoon of service. My team was sent to a local secondhand computer store that focused on supplying computers to families, schools, and nonprofits. We spent our time opening computers and pretty much gutting them. It was pretty fun.

Outside of the store

After a few hours, the store realized they didn't have anything left for us to do. The CE team headed to Rittenhouse Square for team building for the remaining forty five minutes of the day.

This upcoming week is going to be hectic. We will be prepping for our first service event on Friday. I am looking forward to getting started and to getting feedback on my mural ideas from my PM.

Here's to another quick week!

Cheers,
Allee