Forced to go grocery shopping... so others might eat

I have to begin with a brief recap of our first group grocery shopping experience on Monday afternoon. We have decided to start off sharing food and see how that works, as it should save money and be much easier with our limited kitchen space. We created an extensive list of grocery items on Monday morning, to which the only items I was able to contribute that were my absolute necessities were pickles, banana peppers, and marinated artichoke hearts. Luckily Deanna's boyfriend was generous enough to allow us to pile a total of 6 passengers in his car, and a return trip with a trunk full of groceries. I've gone grocery shopping a few times in my life, really only during senior year of college when I tried to have food in my house but failed miserably and fell prey to take-out and WaWa sandwiches each and every night. So my feelings on grocery shopping are less than complacent, it actually makes me really stressed and uncomfortable.

Although I have to say that our shopping trip went better than expected. I only broke into a cold sweat a few times, during loaded decision making like which line to go on and what kinds of milk to buy. Charlotte was in charge of the list and at one point turned to me and said, "Okay Jen I have a task for you...," which was a question met with horror and anxiety by me until she just asked me to go find milk. This was a relief, I just followed the refrigerating around the store until I found it. I think the most challenging single moment of my grocery shopping experience was settling for store brand olive oil, instead of the Philipo Berio Italian olive oil that is always found in my home. I immediately picked that one up without thinking, when my fellow stipend-bound roommates reminded me that we should check the label, and oh look it turns out that the generic brand olive oil is $2 cheaper. However, I did have some of it on my pasta this evening and although it was a bit sub-par, it wasn't completely intolerable. So I survived the shopping trip, but I did offer grocery money plus a monetary bonus payment for shopping and cooking to my roommates for next week, just so I wouldn't have to go back.

Most importantly, we all started our jobs yesterday. Everyone seems to be enjoying it, meeting lots of new people and getting lots of new information thrown at us, but we're all very impressed with our organizations and the many social services they offer, as well as excited to be a part of their wonderful work for the year. I went into the SOME (So Others Might Eat) Headquarters yesterday morning for orientation with some other new volunteers and employees, and then left around 11 am for a retreat to West Virginia. We learned about the history and facets of SOME, which was very interesting because I hadn't realized how very many facitlities they have. They began as a soup kitchen giving out food, and have expanded over the last 38 years to include a full range of social services including about 20 housing programs of every kind, addiction recovery, counseling, dental, medical, employment training, mental health, and emergency services. It was started by a man handing out sandwiches on the streets of DC to the homeless, and has grown to an organization of 275 members that has lasted almost double the lifespan of most non-profits. The CET specifically is basically a school for low-income people who have trouble getting employed. They come every day for about 6 months and learn basic skills needed to get a job, how to be professional, how to dress, how to conduct themselves on the phone and in interviews, and are taught in one of three employment areas. These are phone customer service, medical administrative assistant, and building maintenance and repair. When they graduate, the CET helps them to find jobs.

On the retreat, there were about 9 of us from the CET (Center for Employment Training), including myself and another recent graduate who is part of the Avodah Volunteer Program. Also, the staff of 2 of SOME's transitional housing residences were at the retreat as well, making it a total of about 25. The theme was Stewardship, which is one of SOME's four core values. Over the course of the evening and following day, we discussed what stewardship means, how we feel we are stewards in our organization, how we can be better stewards, and also groups of staff members developed Stewardship Projects to better their work and make a certain process more efficient. It was a nice way to start off on a first day, getting to see everyone relaxed and out of the work setting on their yearly retreat. It was also a good way to be introduced to what happens at the CET and the way the team works together, and gave me a great positive outlook on the strength and the success of the CET as well as making me excited to contribute to such an awesome group of people.

My title is Program Assistant, and as I understand as of now I'll have two main job functions. One is dealing with alumni - keeping contact with graduates of the CET, making sure they have found jobs and been able to keep their jobs, and getting them to come back in if they are having trouble, in which case I would review their resume and the way they are searching for jobs and help where I can. Another thing I will be doing, that we really just developed today as the stewardship project from the retreat, is monitoring the students' progress each quarter by reviewing a set of goals they will have defined for themselves at the start of their time at CET. These goals and improvements will be in four focus areas: basic education, skill training, career development, and human development. They do meet with the instructors one-on-one after competency tests to review their progress, but I will act as a liason between the students and the rest of the staff, helping the students in their individual path towards reaching their goals. Tomorrow I will report to work (after I figure out how to get way down to Southeast) for the first time, and I'm quite excited to get started!