Week 6

Hey Dielle!

Hope everything is still going well on your end! Week 6 has come to a close and we're stepping into 7... I'm really not ready for CSOS to end, I feel like I'm finally in the rhythm of things, but unfortunately, that's all coming to an end.

This week was pretty good overall, with a couple exceptions. Monday was pretty rough at work... I had a new Member orientation, but this person was facing eviction on August 1 due to property damage caused by her kids. She has a Section 8 voucher but is afraid DHA will take it away after her landlord sent them a bad letter. The worst part about the letter is that the landlord included costs they never even notified the Member about. The Member also didn't have a reliable form of transportation in order to get around and she had some misdemeanors that would make it hard to go back for an education at Durham Tech like she wants. It was just really sobering to see all these oppressive systems in action against one person; I personally don't know if I would have the resiliency to keep going and fighting in her shoes. The rest of my meetings Monday were less intense, though. 

Later on Monday, we all went to Harris Teeter, which would've been great, but it was my week to buy groceries for the whole suite... I definitely thought I was under budget until that night and now I'm too scared to check how far over I am.

Tuesday, I had a member who had a large electricity bill with no way to pay it as her only form of income was disability payments. That was fine for her rent, but not the debt because it was for the last month and for some reason, her payments didn't cover it. We tried to negotiate the debt down for a settlement, but unfortunately, Duke Energy was not accepting any settlements, so we looked into a couple emergency funds that she could reach out to. She thankfully has found a new place to live, though, so that's not a problem. I then had a really sweet experience with a Member's child. Since CEF allows Members to bring their kids, we have to keep them entertained somehow sometimes, so we just watched YouTube and ate popcorn together. The part that gave me hope though was that he refused to eat any popcorn unless I shared with him, so that made my day. 

 

Wednesday was my home workday, so I started up with a nice cup of iced coffee and got to work at the desk in our apartment I'm now calling "the office." All it is really is just my laptop plugged in, my notebook, a coaster, and some music from Fran's speakers, but it's got a nice window, so I'm content. Right now, home office work pretty much just consists of calling all the properties on our LIHTC spreadsheet and asking them the same questions, so it can get repetitive, but I understand its necessity. It's just annoying because some landlords can be really rude... 

Thursday, FMF hours were canceled, so I started off with some more phone calls, then I went to office hours. I'm actually now trying to help a Member try to start a podcast and get it on Spotify, so if you've got any insight, it would be much appreciated!

Friday, we went on a tour of Durham for Geraud which was interesting. There's still so much to learn about Durham I think, and even though it was really hot, the ice cream and scooting at the end helped. We also continued to plan out our community event which I'm really excited about! When we got back, Fran and I basically deep cleaned the apartment to the point that I think it was cleaner than how we got it. 

Probably the best and worst part of my weekend though was that I went back to Charlotte for a day to see my mom and also to get checked out by my Orthodontist. While I was back, my mom and I went to Brixx pizza in a nice shopping center in Charlotte with a couple other Egyptians to watch the Egyptian soccer team play. Can't really support the team right now since they failed to kick off a player who was found to be a serial sexual harasser, but I just wanted to see my friends and family again. As we're leaving, my mom is helping 4 Egyptian kids into their dad's car which he has stopped on the side of the road, totally out of the way on the side of the shopping center, so they can get in. Anyway, this white guy drives his pickup truck up and starts yelling at them to get off the side of the road. And then he gets OUT of his car, and starts yelling about how "This is America" and we should "learn how to live here" and a bunch of other stuff that was just so unnecessary. And the whole time he's ranting for god knows what reason, the Egyptian dad in the car is literally just apologizing, but the white guy is all "Sorry doesn't cut" like I just don't know what he wanted. Thankfully some people over at the Starbucks next to us were recording the encounter (cuz the guy was literally a crazy racist...) but yeah, he saw them, jumped back in his pickup truck and drove away. 

I've seen stuff like this before on Twitter, but for it to happen to my mom and family friends right in front of me... I was literally stunned. And frankly, afraid he was gonna pull out a gun or something. It really ruined the tone for the rest of the day, and I'm still shook by the fact that it happened, but I guess that's the world we live in.

Hopefully, week 7 can be a bit less xenophobic though.

Week 5

Heyyyyy Dielle!

Decided on a different opening GIF this time; figured the classic "Hey Dielle" was probably a bit overdone at this point. So, anyway, another week has passed and - oh, wait, it's not just any week, this week marks the halfway point of CSOS! I genuinely cannot believe that we've already done half of CSOS. Some part of me still thinks there's so much more and that CSOS is just beginning, but I guess I gotta touch base with reality. This week has been interesting, to say the least.

On Monday, I fell down on my elbows causing them to get pretty scraped up, but I was fine overall. On a totally unrelated note, we've all been scootering so much recently! I think I've done over 25 miles on just Lime alone, so that doesn't even take into account Spin miles. Besides being a ton of fun, though, scooters save me a decent bit of money. For instance, Lyfting from Swift to CEF would be $6.75, but scooting only costs just under two bucks. In other words, scooting is here to stay. Member meetings went fine on Monday, nothing too crazy happened so that was nice.

On Tuesday, I finished writing a Python computer program that did my spreadsheeting for me for CEF. I was supposed to go through a large government database and cross compare with our CEF database spreadsheets. My program essentially did that entire task for me, highlighting things it couldn't perfectly change so I could check up myself. It was nothing too crazy, but it was cool to be applying some of the stuff I learned at Duke in my internship.

On Wednesday, I had no office hours, so I mostly just perfected my program from in bed while also correcting the things it couldn't pick up on. It was really just a chill day, nothing much happened.

Thursday, I had a team meeting at 12 at Luna's, which was really good. Basically, I found out, Olivia is leaving and Ben is going to have to take over housing while she's gone and I'm Ben's backup/support. It's gonna be a big responsibility to take on, but I'm excited about it as well. I was in and out of office hours until 8:30, and then afterward, a couple of the interns went bowling together, which was really fun! I also learned I'm so bad at bowling, I bowl better with my nondominant hand, so that's fun!

Friday was pretty cool at the Connected Durham conference we went to. A lot of the speakers were really cool and I honestly felt like it had really useful sessions. Unfortunately, I can't say that our presence there was helpful. We were supposed to be helping out, but I can't think of anything useful we actually did.

The main thing I guess I'd say about this week is probably: pretty routine. Given that it was so routine, though, we found our own ways to break the monotony, which was fun. We mostly just scooted, but also got to try out some cool restaurants. 

Here's to Week 6!

Week 4

Hey Dielle!

Was debating whether or not I should make a new GIF, but time's running out, so I guess we'll be running with this one. Last week was the first full week of work and it was... not as busy as I had expected. Monday was pretty casual, worked at Joe van Gogh from 11 to 3 and then had office hours until 7. Nothing too crazy happened, in fact, only 1 of 4 Members I was supposed to meet with showed up, but that was an interesting interaction. The Member, who will remain unnamed for obvious reasons, was struggling with an eviction; to be specific, he had already been evicted. He was simply living in the apartment he was evicted from until the landlord locked the room, which was obviously very scary for both him and us, as that could happen whenever. We tried to talk with him about his immediate plans for if he came back one day to the apartment locked, and while he seemed to be in contact with some friends for couch surfing, he (understandably) seemed averse to the idea of staying in a shelter. The Member wanted our help to contact various landlords and companies to try and find him a new place to stay. We tried to explain to him that the likelihood of a landlord accepting him with his outstanding debt to his previous landlord was close to none and that we should work on reducing that debt and improving his credit, but he was adamant about contacting more landlords at the moment. Since at CEF we only help people reach the goals they want us to help guide them towards, we of course obliged and made several calls. It was just difficult because we knew that nobody would take him in if he didn't get rid of his debt, but in his trauma and with his current mindset, he wouldn't budge and didn't want to work on credit. 

This was definitely a moment of conflict for me. In helping him do what he wanted, I knew that we weren't getting him any closer to his actual goal of finding new housing. However, I also knew it was not my place to tell him what to do especially after he didn't listen to our recommendation the first few times around.

Tuesday, we had a staff meeting from 9-10:30 am, and then office hours 3-5 pm. Neither of my members showed up during office hours, so the office was fairly boring during that time. I just worked on my laptop assessment, which is coming along very nicely! I should be done with it by next Tuesday. 

Wednesday, there was a "philosophy time," which is an analysis of a reading, from 10-11 am. The article was on healing-centered engagement, which was a relatively new concept to me, but it makes sense in that its focused on grassroots healing and positive aspects of people instead of defining them by their traumas. I also just don't have office hours on Wednesday, so I spent the rest of the day working on the laptop test and my Low Income Housing Tax Credit spreadsheets. I'm basically supposed to compare two sheets and update CEF's version to contain all the information on the other two. I started writing a program to do that for me, so we'll see how that comes along.

Thursday was another interesting day. In the morning, we had our Durham tour, which was very informative. We learned about different neighborhoods, their origins, their current state, and we talked about how members felt about them. McDougald Terrace is apparently the one members try and stay away from the most. After that, I had a small lunch break at Swift, and then went to Families Moving Forward, at which, my member didn't attend. At the office, my first member was like 40 minutes late, so we didn't have much time to do anything. She came in with a housing voucher though, so we decided next week, we would email and call landlords at properties she wanted to visit. The next member I had, I simply went through downloading Google and Bandcamp on his phone. 

For dinner Thursday, I had it with two coworkers and a Member, which was really nice to get to know them out of the workplace! The one weird thing, however, was that having met with the Member before, I knew that he wasn't supposed to meet with female advocates, and both my coworkers were girls. He made some potentially problematic statements, but I wasn't sure whether to intervene or not make a scene, so I didn't say anything, especially considering they didn't seem bothered at all. It was just a weird situation to be in, but nothing bad came out of it, so I just brought it up to them afterward.

Friday was fun, we rode Lime scooters to ReCity, it was just a little disappointing our tour was cut out.

Here comes Week 5!

Week 3

Hey Dielle! 

Decided to try out something a little new this time. Initially, I thought I was gonna vlog, and I got some videos, but seeing as I just don't have good video editing software (or unfortunately that much good content), I decided to try legit blogging a try. Lemme know what you think and if you want me to switch back.

I actually can't believe week three is over; it really doesn't feel like we've been here that long, but we've basically finished 1/3 of CSOS. Sounds crazy when I say it like that... So far I've loved CSOS a lot, which isn't really surprising, but it is worth note I think considering we all did come in with such high expectations. From the people, to the fun things we do together, to my placement which I actually love, and even to having my cooking made fun of (thanks for looking out for me with those cooking videos by the way),

everything has been going phenomenally!

I'll start with my placement! This week was my first full week at CEF, and it was also the week I was assigned project work. I've been getting to know the people at the office better, and after going to a pick-up soccer game earlier this week, a co-worker and I are going to play some more pick-up tomorrow! 

Besides the social life at work, meetings have still been going well. You said you wanted to learn more about them, and I'm happy to share! Meetings are essentially 1 hour long sessions in which members come to us with whatever problems or needs they might have and we do everything we can to support them reach their goals. I really love CEF's mindset of reserving the power of agency to the member, with us only being there and accessible for them to make use of. I also love CEF's mentality of us not needing to know everything, embracing "I don't know," and figuring things out with the member. 

Connect (CEF's software database) makes all the basics fairly straightforward, but we still have to figure a lot out on our owns. My meetings range in topic vastly, from helping members fix their credit scores, to helping them find housing, to even setting up their brand new phones with them. It really just comes down to what the member wants to work on. I've had some meetings that have been extremely heavy and difficult for me to grapple and deal with, like when a member told me their wife had left with their child or when another member told me she was getting evicted by the end of the month and needed to pay off her debts, but I've also had fairly straightforward meetings, like helping people budget their expenses or set up a savings account with us.

As I mentioned earlier, I also started project work this week! I've got several continuous projects as well as several deliverable ones. As far as the continuous ones, I am CEF's liaison with nonprofits Kramden Institue and Durham Furniture Project, and I am a housing specialist. With Kramden, I essentially forward laptop requests from CEF as Kramden offers refurbished and rebuilt laptops for $100 to low-income Durhamites who also pass some computer literacy tests. Durham Furniture Project (AKA "FPOD") essentially does the same thing except with furniture and for free, however, I've found that they tend to be a lot slower and have a system where we can only send them furniture requests when they ask for them. I'm sure they have their reasons, especially dealing with capacity, but it does make it annoying for us when members are moving into new homes in a short time period and we can't get the furniture from FPOD. As a housing specialist, I essentially will take on lots of housing meetings with members (i.e. meetings in which members want to work on finding new housing), and I will also learn everything CEF can teach me about Durham housing. Next week on Thursday, Ben Succop, Olivia Simpson, and I (the housing specialist team which is also all BNs!) are going on a field trip to visit several Durham neighborhoods to get more hands-on experience with housing in Durham. 

All my deliverable projects unsurprisingly also lie in the areas of housing, laptops, and furniture. In housing, I will be in charge of updating a spreadsheet on low-income tax credit housing, which I know nothing about yet and will learn about more next week. I also need to redesign the examination members take in order to prove their computer literacy to be eligible for Kramden's laptops so that it can be more representative of the modules they learn in. I currently don't have any deliverable goals for FPOD.

Beyond work, the week has also been going great! Like I said, I played soccer which was fun, and I also had a little bit of time to play some piano which was refreshing. I'm also nearly done with The Martian which has been a good read. I made some taco dip for everyone this week and while it wasn't perfect, Ella, Faith, and Sarah seemed to enjoy it so we're getting somewhere. We also went to Anderson .Paak's concert which was so much fun! I had to Lyft straight from work and I really thought I wasn't gonna make it, but I made it just in time for him to come on stage. We also went to McDonald's afterward (even after my incessant whining for Cookout) but it was still a good time.

Can't wait for Week 4!