Why hello again! I am into the 1st day of my 6th month as I write this 2nd quarterly report, and this time around, it's not the brain block of "Could it be that I have nothing much to report in my two months here?" that is making writing this report a challenge, but rather, it is the opposite. Looking at my notes (yes, I made notes this time!) from the past 3 months, I am struggling to decide what I need to eliminate in order to make this report of readable length. Needless to say, the Grinnell Corps in Grinnell @ MICA Fellowship experience has changed very dramatically in what just seems like the blink of an eye (yes, summer is definitely over, and the days are flying by again!).
The Experience Sinceâ¦
Remember how I said from last time that I thought the team was coming together finally? Well, in October, Amber left us to get married and move to Des Moines (Congratulations, Amber!), and we had Paula join the team as the new FDW (Family Development Worker) just in time to prep for the Low Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) season. With the arrival of the "LIHEAP season", I have cut down on my home visit activities and Head Start classroom and instead, have been spending more time based in the Family Development Center working with Paula to process LIHEAP applications and helping with the smooth running of the other crisis intervention programs such as the Food Pantry and Ministerial Fund distribution, among others, that MICA offers.
Energy Assistance
First off, some facts about LIHEAP: The program runs from Oct 1st-April 15th - it is funded by Federal dollars, and funds are administered across the country by various organizations including community actions such as MICA. Any person or family who is at or under the 150% poverty level (which is $14,355.00 annually for a single person household) qualifies for this program. Factors such as the number of people in the household, if any household members are elderly or children and type of heating source, just to name a few, are taken into account and a one time award payment (the average award amount for 2004 was $317.00) for is made to the vendor to help out with the heating bills for the winter season. In addition, qualifying for LIHEAP puts one under moratorium, which means that your electricity cannot be cut off for any reason from Nov 1st - April 1st. Of course, one needs to keep making regular payments towards their heating bills in order to avoid being disconnected come April 2nd!
In the last month and a half since the start of the LIHEAP program, we have processed 334 applications in Poweshiek County, of which about 150 have been for the elderly and disabled on a fixed income (the month of October was put aside to process applications for the elderly and disabled who were auto-eligible i.e. on fixed income such as SSD or SSI) According to Diane Popelka, the Energy Assistance & Emergency Services Coordinator at MICA, for the fiscal year of 2006, a total of $169,154.00 has been paid out in LIHEAP awards.
According to Diane, she never thought she would see the day that there would be more than 300 applications in Poweshiek County. For the fiscal year of 2005, 568 applications were taken. The number of annual applications has increased for the last 3 consecutive years, and this could be partly due to the fact that that there are more people who are eligible who are becoming aware of this program. In addition, due to the rise in the cost of fuel, more and more folks are feeling the pinch when it comes to paying their heating bills and are thus seeking assistance through LIHEAP. Sadly, funding for this program has not increased commensurate to the rise in heating costs, so you can bet your socks that there will be folks out there freezing their socks off this winter. 9 Interestingly enough, I've noted that few, if any, farmers have signed up for LIHEAP (There is a box where one checks off "farmer" or not - I don't recall processing any applications that have had that box checked off). It is food for thought as to why this is so- could this be due to the pride factor, the farming ethic maybe?
In any case, now that Nov 1st has hit, we have appointments booked up to 3 weeks in advance and Paula and I have been processing applications every half hour from 10am to 2pm, sometimes earlier or later, depending on when people can come in, and boy some days, it has been a nuthouse with the buzz of activity going on!
Tales of Canned Food, Life Cereal and Food Boxes.
Over the past few months, I have also become extremely familiar with the Food Pantry, also known as the Emergency Food Supply Shelf. Some days we go through 10 boxes in less than 2 hours, some days we have half a dozen sitting pretty for a while. I am now capable of not only making up multiple food boxes at a time and telling you exactly where the spaghetti sauce, pancake mix and oatmeal are with the flick of a finger, but I can also pick up and carry 7 tins in one arm without dropping a single one of them oh, about 80% of the time!
Humourousness aside, a friend recently asked me who qualifies to use the Food Pantry. I figure that some of you out there reading this might also be interested in the answer to that question, so here's what I came up with:-
"Who qualifies for emergency food services?Anybody who doesn't have food in his or her kitchen. Sometimes we get first-timers, like kids who've walked out of bad family situations who are trying to make it on their own. Sometimes we get single moms on welfare whose food stamps have run out and have no money left to spend on buying food to feed their kids.
Sometimes it's teenage parents who don't know what they've gotten themselves into and don't have formula or diapers for their newborn child. Sometimes it's old folks on Social Security that by the time they're done paying their health expenses and bill don't have enough money left to buy food to get them through till the next month.
Sometimes it's a grandma who's suddenly got extra mouths to feed because the parent(s) of her grandchildren upped and left or got incarcerated. Sometimes it's a college student who's trying hard to make ends meet. Sometimes it's the middle class family on the block who's had a sudden crisis and had to use up all their funds and suddenly don't have any money until the next paycheque comes in to buy food and or other items like laundry detergent or cleaning supplies (which we do stock up on).
The list goes on and on, and yes there are folks who sometimes take advantage of the existence of the food pantry and misuse the services it is supposed to provide - this does get me really frustrated, but the most important thing is getting food to those who are in need of it."
On a side note, it never crossed my mind that I would one day make use of my experience working with Dining Services freshman year in conjunction with the work that I would be doing 4 years later! One day we were running short on boxes to make up food boxes, and I offered to go scavenge for some. I learnt from Paula that apart from random donations of boxes, it was quite an ordeal to get them from local stores as there were set times to pick them up, and that it was never quite a certainty that we would get any boxes if any.
A sudden flashback to those days of working at Quad Dining Hall and doing box duty (breaking down and hauling cardboard boxes to the recycling area) made me pick up the phone and call Lyle Baumann to check and see if by any chance we over at MICA could get a hold of those boxes before they got taken away for recycling, and Lyle's response was "Sho' thing, young lady - help yourself!" and lo and behold, thanks to that connection, we now have a new, hassle free source of boxes. Score one for doing time with Dining Services freshman year!
While we get to order food in bulk from the NorthEast Iowa Food Bank using donated funds, the food pantry is stocked mostly by donations in kind. On multiple occasions, the uncanny precision and appropriateness with which donations arrive at our doorstep have strengthened my belief in the existence of some form of divine intervention of some sort. Just the other day, we were out of bread vouchers and down to our last package of frozen hot dog buns in the freezer when a random trucker dude came asking if this was the community kitchen and if we could make use of 6 cases of fresh loaves of Italian bread that he had transported here but the local store that ordered it did not want it because it hadn't arrived on the right day. Bring it on, man! Another day, Paula and I were getting just a little antsy about the amount of food that we had left in store and we discussed it offhandedly - the very next day, we received word that the local High School had collected over a THOUSAND pounds worth of food for us.
Another story that I would like to share is, again, related to the college. Over $3500 was made in proceeds from the Hoofin' It 5K run held last spring that was organized by Mortarboard (Grinnell College's equivalent of an honor society), of which many members were my close friends (I'm continuing your good work guys, yeah!). With that amount of money, a contract was drawn up with a local grocery store so that each person who came to get a food box would also be able to get a voucher to get $5.00 worth of fresh produce as well from November 1st onwards until the funds run out.
While we try to have the contents of food boxes as nutritious and healthy as possible, canned vegetables and tinned fruit have nothing over FRESH produce! Over the summertime there was the Plant A Row program where local gardeners planted an extra row and brought their produce in Fridays to be distributed. Now with the onset of winter, the vouchers provided by the Hoofin' It 5K proceeds are helping us to continue getting nutritious food to those most in need of it.
Of Dinosaur-Cows, Dinosaur-Dragons and Dragon-Bears.
On Monday and Wednesday mornings, I get a treat that is somewhat of a trade-off. While I love getting to live my 7 year old self's dream of observing farm creatures grazing in the pasture and the beauty of wide, open nature, I have to wake up bright (ok, sometimes, not so brightly, more like groggily) and early to ride the Head Start Bus to pick up about a half dozen preschoolers who attend the Half-Day Head Start Classroom. Although I do occasionally substitute at the classroom, it is in the bus-rides that I have found my happy medium in interacting with and learning about and from children. (An hour in the bus with six children is just about right for me!)
Earlier on, an acquaintance had made a passing comment that made me question just how much importance or difference I was making by merely riding in the bus with the Head Start kids in the morning. It was a good prodding question because it made me reflect on my seemingly insignificant role as bus monitor. I realized that even though all I did was "ride the bus with the kids" on Monday and Wednesday mornings - I was the first person (apart from Pat the bus driver) whom they saw on those mornings before they went to school and that I do indeed an impact on how their days unfold even if it's just by greeting them and prepping them to get excited for school.
I've enjoyed watching them learn to use their p's and q's with some gentle prodding on my part, and also learning to address people by their name instead of just a "Hey!" I'm hoping that I'm making a difference by helping to reinforce these skills in these kids. Maybe they will help them get stand out more in a job interview one day, or maybe just help them get along their way a little easier in society when they grow up.
Sometimes though, I am not so successful in my attempts at "teaching". For example, one day I'd just taught them was the word "crazy" meant, so they wouldn't go around using it as nonchalantly as they were doing. Couple minutes later, I heard K tell P "You and me are going to â¦" and then T chimed in and said "No. no, P and me are going toâ¦" and I leaned over and attempted to teach them the "right" way of using "You and I" instead of "You and me"â¦which admittedly I didn't do too good a job off because it went like so,
Marie: "K, it is more correct to say that "P and I" are going toâ¦"
K: "No, Teacherr, it's P and me!"
Marie: "Yes yes, I know, but it should be "P and I", instead of "P and me" as in P and you are going to go â¦" (and seeing the look of confusion in K's eyes decided to drop the issue and said to K "Oh, nevermindâ¦") to which K heaved a dramatic sigh, rolled his eyes heavenward and said in the most sorry tone to me: "Oh Teacherr, you are CRAYZEE!"
My interactions with these children have also reinforced my belief in the potential they hold for their and our future. When I take into account that most of these children come from low-income families that don't have as many opportunities as other families, and have different family dynamics and home situations from the norm, I am amazed at how resilient, and brilliant even, some of these kids are. Their imaginations and the potential in their intellectual capabilities never cease to amaze me, as does their sense of humour and trust in the world.
For example, this story that I'm about to recount takes place at the playground, it's outside time, and J's playing by the fence in a rather, shall we say, suspicious way, and Heather who's the Lead Teacher calls out to him "Hey J, whatcha doing over there?"
J: "There's a spider over here!!!"
H: "Well let's try to stay away from spiders ok?"
J: "WHY???"
H: "Well, because they might bite you if you get too close or if you hit them by accident."
J: "But if they bite me then I can become like Spiderman!"
H: "No you won't, that won't happen."
*At this point, the playground becomes less noisy and the other kids are starting to get interested in this exchange..
J: "WHY???"
H: "Coz it's just PRETEND!"
*A deathly silence pervades the playground and all the kids pause in the middle of their play, everybody's paying attention now and it seems like there's an interminable pause going on until â¦
J: "You mean I'll just have fake spiderwebs coming out of my hands?"
H: "Errr...yeah..." (Nice save, Heather!)
And the kids breathed a collective sigh of relief and resumed wildly running around and playing again.
I will end this section with the story about the heading that I decided to give this section of my report. One morning on the bus, we had run out of pages in the colouring books for the kids to colour with. So I suggested that maybe I could draw some pictures in their notebooks to colour in instead. Three kids requested that I draw 2 dragons and a dinosaur respectively. The final products of these artwork requests ended up rather dodgy looking due to my lack of expertise in drawing dragons and dinosaurs, so it pleased me greatly when the kids finally, in a consensus, after much debating amongst themselves (with some objections here and there from me) agreed to call their pictures respectively as "The Dragon-Bear", "The Dinosaur-Dragon" and "The Cow-Dinosaur".
Surely You've Done More than Just Drawing Hyphenated Animals, Mucking Around the Food Pantry and Processing Energy Assistance Applications?
Yes I have! In addition to the three main activities that I've expanded upon above, I've also had the chance to continue keeping an eye on local level policy making by following the Healthy Choices Coalition meetings, I've been exposed to the enormity of the methamphetamine problem in Iowa (did you know that 90% of users in Iowa are female? And that meth is a legacy of Hitler's Nazi regime?) and learnt how to manage babies and children who've been exposed to meth.
I've had the chance to experience FDW work, the real deal, hands on, feet off the ground running the MICA Family Development center independently on several occasions due to unforeseen circumstances when Paula could not come into the office. I've also had the opportunity to work with a few Grinnell College student volunteers (wonderful, wonderful individuals! Rock on!), and also done some outreach work in the community by presenting information about LIHEAP at an Energy Forum (though the sight of my former Senior Seminar Psychology professor at the beginning of the event provoked my excessive utterances of "uhmâ¦" during my presentation⦠*ulp*)
Thoughts and Observations on â¦
Thanks to the exposure gained from this Fellowship, I have become more aware of news of happenings at Congress. For example, if it wasn't for my involvement with LIHEAP, the little blurb in the Sunday newspapers just the other weekend wouldn't have caught my eye. But that 5 line report on how Congress had failed to pass the bill that would have allocated an extra $3 billion to the LIHEAP program (56 yes to 43 no, falling short by 4 votes of the majority 60 votes needed) caught my attention and held it because I now know what the impact of that decision means.
I know that it means that some folks will go without a lot of things this winter season so that they can have heat in their homes. It means that for some families, the parents will go without eating regular meals so their kids will have enough to eat, it will mean that some elderly folks will take half of their prescriptions so that they will be able to stretch their medicine to last them just a little longer before getting their next prescription, so they'll be able to pay their heating bills. It means that for some families, they will forgo seeing the doctor until they get really really sick because the cost of going to see the doctor for one individual from that family might mean a months worth of having some heat in the house for the whole family. It goes on and on, the scenarios that one can imagine, and what's most disturbing is that these imagined scenarios ARE reality for some.
I learnt from talking with Diane (who is THE person to talk to about Energy Assistance at MICA) that the reason why that bill did not pass was because of the other stipulations that had been tacked on to the tail end of it. That had the increase in funding towards energy assistance been passed, funds would have been taken out of the Head Start and Food Stamps program, which is a PREPOSTEROUS idea. How does it make sense to take money away from programs that are supposed to very same population of people?! Argh.
Learning about all this is frustrating. Sometimes I feel like maybe that's why there are some people who choose to remain oblivious to the goings-on of the world that we live in, because it's just that much easier when you don't know and when you do know, it is that much harder to fight the feeling of powerlessness and keep on trying to make a difference in the opposite direction, no matter how small.
Another bone that I have to pick is with the recent Child Sex Offender Act that requires all registered child sex offenders to live outside of a 2000 foot radius of schools and day-car centers. Does society think that just banishing registered child sex offenders out into areas 2000 feet away from schools and day care centers will solve the problem that is the robbing of the innocence of children? Out of sight (or out of a 2000 foot radius) equals out of mind? Hello, a child sex offender can still walk, bike, use public transportation OR drive a car to reach a destination where that individual can get to a child. How about better prevention methods like making sure that kids get signed out properly from school for starters instead (and I know from personal experience that this is something that some local schools can vastly improve on, if anyone's interested in taking that issue upâ¦)? In addition, a high percentage of perpetrators of child sexual abuse are known to the family and are not random strangers so what's up with that?
Needless to say, the motive behind the law is good and well intentioned, but it has not been well thought out and the enaction of this law has, in my humble opinion, caused more harm than good. It does more harm than good, especially to children (yes, some former child sex offenders are trying to work on making life better through working with family development programs like those offered by MICA, and some of them happen to have children too, who should not have to bear the responsibility for the past actions of their parents, and these children suffer when they get uprooted, when their father or mother loses their job because they cannot afford the commute to their work place now that they have to live way way out in the country, or worse still, spend money that they don't have to move to another county) which is a very sad irony because it is this very population of society (children) that this law tries to protect.
Indeed, I am now more able to see how policy-level decisions affect lives at the individual level and it frustrates me that more cannot be done more effectively. Sometimes, when I work through crisis intervention situations, I feel like what I am learning to do is band-aid work, slapping on the band-aids after an injury has taken place. I often marvel that in this society, "band-aids" are available even though in limited amounts, that is good in comparison to societies where there are no support systems to fall back on at all. But then I ask myself, is this what I want to do, or do I want to try to work more on preventing "injuries" from happening in the first place, wouldn't that save more money, effort, and human lives in the long run? How do I go about doing that? This line of thought has led me to apply to some graduate school programs, where hopefully coupled with my experiences at the grassroots level so far, I will learn the skills and tools that will allow me to make a difference more effectively.
Living in Grinnell Post-Grad.
I have come to realize the kaleidoscope of an experience that is living outside the 'Grinnell Bubble' in Grinnell. Can I tell you, I am experiencing Grinnell, and Iowa, like never before!
There have been experiences like the following (for those of you who are considering doing Grinnell Corps in Grinnell, heads up!); say, if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me once the academic year started "Hey didn't you graduate? What are you still doing here?" I'd have a really NICE pair of boots to wear for the winter already. Occasionally, I also do get the feeling that some of the more judgmental folks with preconceptions who walk into MICA and identify me as "one of those college students" right off the bat do not enjoy working with me that much (a perceived lack of experience due to my youth?), but, those experiences are few and far in between.
Admittedly, while there have been frustrating moments where I feel like questioning the meaning of human existence due to the actions and reactions (or non-actions) of some folks, for the most part, it has been an affirming experience interacting with the myriad of folks that I've come into contact through MICA. Truly, the human experience is what I've come to treasure most these last 5 months. I have met some incredibly strong-hearted and warm-hearted folks who still have heart, who have taught me about respect, dignity and having a sense of humour even in hard and unfair times. I have come into contact with folks who have been role models in teaching me about giving back and passing it forward even when they have little themselves. It truly has been a privilege to serve some of the folks that I have met.
I want to share a humourous interaction that I had with a little old lady came in to the office to get some information on a day when I was down with a bad cold and sounded like an old man losing his voice. As this soft-spoken elderly lady in a pink feather boa scarf was leaving the office, she turned around and said to me "Thanks so much for your help honey. Well, I hope you get well soon from whatever it is you've got ⦠I'm sure it's making you feel like what is it ⦠yes, crap. Those things make you feel like *crap*, don't they? Bless your heart, honey". And with that, she exited the office.I tell ya, if my throat and ears weren't hurting so bad I would've cracked up, once I got over being stunned hearing the word crap being pronounced with so crisply and with such clarity and vehemence by this grandmamma of a little old lady.
Outside of the MICA time, I've had the chance to take bike rides out into the country (when the weather was good), gone to Iowa City to listen to a visiting prof speak on social justice in post-apartheid South Africa, went to a wee diner called Joe's Bar & Grill in Searsboro with some friends where we had the most sinfully delish deep-fat-fried food to be found anywhere, visited the Des Moines Farmers' Market and the International Food Fair that was held in conjunction with the World Food Prize, listened to Ashanti (a local jazz group) play at Pella, visited the Neal Smith Wildlife Reserve and checked out tall grass prairie and bison, and oh my goodness, I also had the opportunity to go combining at a local farm (I drove a 8-row combine at 5 miles/hour, tearing through the cornfield and saw a pheasant and deer dart in between the rows of corn while I was at it!) and heard stories about farming and how that scene's changed. I also got told the story of a local farmer who loved his beer so much that he planted crooked rows of corn because he'd finish off a can of beer for each 10 rows he planted! I do suppose that part of my fascination with the experiences I've had has something to do with being a non-native Iowan and for that I am just a tiny bit more thankful for the extra dash of excitement it has given me.
Bye Now, Bless Your Heart!
Well, I guess that's all for now. In summary, the last 3 months of the Grinnell Corps Fellowship in Grinnell with MICA has been exciting, challenging and tiring⦠and I am LIVIN' IT! :. Again, if you have any questions, feedback, bones to pick with anything I've brought up, please get in touch with me at tanmarie@grinnell.edu. I would welcome any thoughts or comments. I thank you for sharing my experience thus far and hope that this report has been an interesting read.In summary, the last 3 months of the Grinnell Corps Fellowship in Grinnell with MICA has been exciting, challenging and tiring⦠and I am LIVIN' IT! :
