Date: October 25, 2008
Place: #26 Bus to the Eastside Boys and Girls Club
It’s another early morning, and the sun hasn’t yet cleared the horizon where I can see it. I’m on my way to the Eastside Boys and Girls Club. It sits next to MLK Academy, one of the schools we’re working at. Like many of the places we do service at, Eastside needs upkeep and revitalisation work done, but the cost of hiring someone would be prohibitive and take money away from their main mission.
Instead, City Year can bring in corps members, plus what is usually a greater number of external volunteers. Supply costs may be borne by the site, supported by our own grants or, as in this case, come from our own stock.
Today, we’ll be painting light poles and window frames with Rustoleum, repainting a playground where paint has begun to peel, painting bleachers and stands at the baseball field, building a community garden, and placing a mural on the side of the gym. Yesterday we spent the first half of the day in prep work. The Civic Engagement team, which runs a lot of these types of projects, had already planned everything out, but we still needed to sand surfaces for painting, lay down primer, and mask windows.
Based on the few projects I’ve seen so far, I’d say we usually do one hour of prep for every 2-3 hours a project is scheduled to last. On top of that there is planning and cleanup after volunteers have left.
Date: October 30, 2008
Place: #93 Bus to UTSA
One of the things I think I value most about City Year is what seems to be a genuine desire for open, honest communication. Granted, there are things we don’t know; the number of hours each team works seems to be specifically off limits.
In most corps communiques, though, honest but hard self and corps assessment has been encouraged from day one. One of our first days, corps members were introduced to a CY practice called Roses and Thorns.
In front of team leaders we’d only known for a couple days, we stated things we’d liked and disliked about the workshop that had been one of their first acts on the job. At the end of each day we do the same thing, discussing the best and worst (for us) elements of the day.
The degree of openness fluctuates, and I know I sometimes sit on a thought for a couple days till it crystallizes. But the benefit is a level of trust and insight into teammates that I would not have expected.