January

Well, I was supposed to come back to work in this new year of 2005 but alas, I was stuck in WI. I had to call in cold. I spent new year's in the pleasant company of the Better Friends of Wisconsin (BFW) up in Ashland, the headquarters. But then Melissa's car broke. No matter! I made it back eventually, safe and sound.

In the beginning of January, Ubah and I put the finishing touches on the CTC Scan and turned it all in. I spent the month gaining more confidence running the programs in the lab and getting to know residents. The CTEP trainings gained momentum and are beginning to remind me more and more of NCCC (in a good way. Most of the time...). I also started learning how to "ghost" the computers- revert to a saved copy of the hard drive- to keep the computers up and running at Skyline.

CommonBond Computer Team
CommonBond started a Computer Team to focus on resources for the computer labs of family sites in CommonBond. We started by assessing technology resources and current programs offered at family sites. I helped with Skyline and Cathedral tech inventories. We also investigated the possibility of having Plato at Cathedral, so Dave (the IT guy) and I installed all the Flash plug-ins to get it going over there.

Service Events
Jan. 17 Since Martin Luther King Jr. Day is "a day on, not a day off" for national service, I set up a service project for CTEP. We volunteered to set up for and clean up after the annual MLK Day rally, march and main event in St. Paul. Unfortunately I couldn't go because I caught the flu. I was so mad... I hear it was really great though.

Events
Jan. 5 We held a Plato Open House at the Skyline Computer Lab, and invited all the parents to come and learn about what their kids spent their time doing in the lab. We had light refreshments (kids got a cookie for every adult they brought down) and lots of parents showed up to learn about Plato! It was awesome.

CommonBond Training
Jan. 14 I met with Barb Hydeen (Ubah's supervisor!) to learn more about the Career Advantage Program. They reserve the Skyline Lab every Tuesday.

Jan 26. I went to Immigration Training at Seward Towers. It was very informative- it was about the immigration process and the differences between immigrants, refugees and asylees. Since many of the residents at Skyline are Somali refugees, I feel it was really valuable to learn how they came to us.

CTEP Training
Jan. 6 We had training at Metropolitan State University Library in St. Paul- great facility! We had a snowball fight and got to know each other better (we had to write three things about ourselves on a paper, crumple it up, and throw it at someone. Then we read someone else's and had to go figure out which person had written it. I got Ubah's, Kien got mine). We watched a great video about an AmeriCorps program in the Bay Area and all their drama. That REALLY brought me back to my NCCC days. After pizza we went to see Chuck McDew talk about the civil rights movement in MN, and he was so great. He was very casual, and just told a strange combination of jokes and horrific stories about what he and his collegues went through. Some amazing people.

Jan. 28 Oh wow. We had a very intense training. A longtime friend/associate of Catherine's came in and gave a collaboration workshop. We discovered that we already knew what collaboration was and that it was hard and took time, and then she made us collaborate. For hours. Then and there. It was helpful though, as many of us hadn't had a chance to work with one another yet.
After that, we had a volunteer mobilization training with a woman from the Volunteer Resource Center (which is who I found out about the MLK Day thing from). It was so much fun- I found out that I am an "affiliator", which means that I like potlucks and teamwork. No seiously, we talked about three types of volunteers and the ways they like to be recruited, supervised and recognized. The other types are "achievers"- independent problem solvers that like a challenge and "influencers"- they like to take ownership of projects and be recognized by people with influence (you have to watch them though, they have their own agenda...)

Then they told us to have a Great Weekend. I love it!
(and, this was the first meeting that some of us CTEPers went out socially after. We ended up at the red dragon. How can we not feel like a community after that?)