Hello all,
Again I apologize for it being so long between updates. Things have been good but still busy, as I've been wrapping up my full-time portion of the fellowship over the last week or so. I've distributed and collected a bunch of end of summer surveys for the residents and am mostly finished inputting and analyzing them in excel. Doing so has definitely been a learning experience in terms of how to quantify social impact, as well as the logistics of data collection. In addition I've met with the other student & staff leaders in DREAM and put together a refined / defined leadership structure document outlining how the position of community liaison which I've created will interact with the co-chairs and other leadership positions, which until now had never really been defined. The document should help improve dream's overall efficiency by lessening the difficulties due to leadership transitions each term & everyone having different D-Plans.
In other news, the Dartmouth summer term has ended and school started this past week for the kids - which means things are now quiet in the morning, which is nice because it gives me a chance to talk more with parents without kids running around. I'm definitely looking forward to resuming in the fall because its much easier to talk about serious issues with parents when things are calm & quiet and you can have privacy.
As far as the weekly meetings and computer centers are, we had our last meeting of the summer last week and will resume in a few weeks (I'm leading DOC trip and have UGA training for the next few weeks). Our first meeting of fall will kick off with a budgeting & money management presentation by the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of VT/NH. And the computers are all set, have been working without issue for awhile, and the internet service is paid for for awhile. Also, on an unrelated note, last week some of the parents at Hollow Drive commented that it would be nice to have a basketball hoop in the community to give kids (especially the older kids) a productive & safe thing to do instead of getting into trouble. So I did a small campus fund raiser during finals and made about $200 and now they have a hoop, and it's been great to see both parents & kids using it together.
Overall, I'm feeling definitely some mixed emotions as I'm getting ready to move out and back onto campus. I've definitely loved the opportunity to live and work here, and think I've made some good sustainable changes in the community. At the same time, I definitely began the summer with more optimistic expectations of being able to fix or at least help fix some of the more serious issues in the communities - such as the parents with drug & alcohol problems, and one family that had a dysfunctional family dynamic with their teenage daughter, whose since been taken into state custody. On the other hand, interacting with these issues has helped me learn tons about the culture of poverty and why the poverty cycle is do difficult to break.
I probably won't post another update for a few weeks, but look forward to meeting with the UVSE Board members sometime early this fall and will have many more thoughts to share then.
I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday weekend, and I want to thank all the members of the class of '82 for making my summer experience possible. Thanks!
Brian
UVSE Fellowship Overview
The *Class of 1982 Upper Valley Social Entrepreneur Fellowship* supports a Dartmouth undergraduate who will devote full time work in one leave-term and part-time work in several academic terms to working with an Upper Valley non-profit organization on social entrepreneurial ventures. Each fellow is selected based on their grant application which presents a plan for innovative and sustainable change in the way the organization serves the local community. This all falls under the umbrella of the Tucker Foundation, whose mission is to help students develop to be "Ethical Leaders and Responsible Citizens" during their four years at Dartmouth.
Brian's Fellowship Project Overview
As the first recipient of the Upper Valley Social Entrepreneurial Fellowship funded by the Dartmouth Class of '82, I am working for DREAM as the the first ever Community Liaison. DREAM is a student-led non-profit 501(c)3 mentoring organization that matches college students with youth from disadvantaged neighborhoods in Vermont. Having been a DREAM mentor for three years and co-chair of the program for about a year, I became aware that one of the biggest issues DREAM has trouble with is that our mentoring efforts have been almost exclusively focused on the children without engaging and reaching out to their parents', who ultimately have the biggest impact on their children's lives. I've therefore started the position of Community Liaison, whose fundamental responsibility is to serve as a liaison for the parents in the communities. By improving parents' access to existing resources which allow them to increase their financial stability and parenting skills, and by facilitating communication between parents and child's mentor, DREAM is better able to make more long-term impact on the children's lives.
I have four specific action plan components of my project. First, I've installed two new computer systems in each of the community centers, to allow everyone in the community, especially parents, access to e-mail, the DREAM Google Calendar, and the infinite ability of the web to network, job search, and troubleshoot daily problems. A second component of my project has been starting up weekly parent meetings in each of the communities. Meetings focus on DREAM's role in the community and how it can be improved, on various community issues such as recycling and proper use of the community center, and often incorporate programs or speakers that give presentations targeted toward needs of the community. The third component of my project involves meeting individually with each parent at least once a week in order to address individual concerns, ranging from financial difficulties to specific problems with their kids, and offering referrals when appropriate. The final component of my project involves simply facilitating the communication between each parent and their child's mentor in order to ensure that each mentor is working in conjunction with individual parents' efforts and disciplinary systems, which allows our mentoring efforts to be much more effective.
The *Class of 1982 Upper Valley Social Entrepreneur Fellowship* supports a Dartmouth undergraduate who will devote full time work in one leave-term and part-time work in several academic terms to working with an Upper Valley non-profit organization on social entrepreneurial ventures. Each fellow is selected based on their grant application which presents a plan for innovative and sustainable change in the way the organization serves the local community. This all falls under the umbrella of the Tucker Foundation, whose mission is to help students develop to be "Ethical Leaders and Responsible Citizens" during their four years at Dartmouth.
Brian's Fellowship Project Overview
As the first recipient of the Upper Valley Social Entrepreneurial Fellowship funded by the Dartmouth Class of '82, I am working for DREAM as the the first ever Community Liaison. DREAM is a student-led non-profit 501(c)3 mentoring organization that matches college students with youth from disadvantaged neighborhoods in Vermont. Having been a DREAM mentor for three years and co-chair of the program for about a year, I became aware that one of the biggest issues DREAM has trouble with is that our mentoring efforts have been almost exclusively focused on the children without engaging and reaching out to their parents', who ultimately have the biggest impact on their children's lives. I've therefore started the position of Community Liaison, whose fundamental responsibility is to serve as a liaison for the parents in the communities. By improving parents' access to existing resources which allow them to increase their financial stability and parenting skills, and by facilitating communication between parents and child's mentor, DREAM is better able to make more long-term impact on the children's lives.
I have four specific action plan components of my project. First, I've installed two new computer systems in each of the community centers, to allow everyone in the community, especially parents, access to e-mail, the DREAM Google Calendar, and the infinite ability of the web to network, job search, and troubleshoot daily problems. A second component of my project has been starting up weekly parent meetings in each of the communities. Meetings focus on DREAM's role in the community and how it can be improved, on various community issues such as recycling and proper use of the community center, and often incorporate programs or speakers that give presentations targeted toward needs of the community. The third component of my project involves meeting individually with each parent at least once a week in order to address individual concerns, ranging from financial difficulties to specific problems with their kids, and offering referrals when appropriate. The final component of my project involves simply facilitating the communication between each parent and their child's mentor in order to ensure that each mentor is working in conjunction with individual parents' efforts and disciplinary systems, which allows our mentoring efforts to be much more effective.
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