IMPACT minutes 10.27.08

ANNOUNCEMENTS / UPCOMING EVENTS

Beyond Confusion Corner: Service and Civic Engagement in the City of Williamsburg
Wednesday, October 29th at 7pm in Morton 20
to quote from Long's e-mail..."Mayor Jeanne Zeidler, SA President Valerie Hopkins, and Social Services Director Pete Walentisch will engage students in a presentation entitled "Beyond Confusion Corner: Service and Civic Engagement in the City of Williamsburg". This is the city we live in for most of the year, and we all have a responsibility to be informed and active in our political decisions. A question and answer period will follow the presentation."

Food-Preparation Shift at the DC Central Kitchen
Friday, November 21 from 1:30pm-midnight at DC Central Kitchen
Organized by OSVS/Commuity Service Leaders...this is the blurb from the OSVS listserv:
*new* Nov 21:  Interested in learning about alleviating hunger sustainably in the DC Metro Area?  Volunteer for a food-preparation shift at the DC Central Kitchen (http://www.dccentralkitchen.org/) on Friday, November 21.  A van will depart from campus at about 1:30pm and will return to campus around midnight of the same day.  For more information and/or to sign up, email rdwils@wm.edu!  Join the Community Service Leaders for a great service opportunity!Housing Partnerships Update

Housing Partnerships Update:
have not heard back from Brandie Wieler (volunteer coordinator) about Fridays; Kate will send her an e-mail


PLANS/DISCUSSIONS

Our Mission(?)

• What are the causes of poverty in Williamsburg?
• Are they being addressed?
• If not, what can we do to address them?
  

Areas of Focus for the Rest of the Semester:

• local poverty and its characteristics (ie: Housing Partnerships and FISH)
• local poverty research
• global poverty research
  

*note -- next meeting we will divide into research groups for local and global poverty*

Goals for the End of the Semester:

• have research that can be put in a report or perhaps even more condensed format
• connect local poverty issues and research with what we discover about global poverty and solutions to global poverty
• come up with ideas about the causes of poverty in Williamsburg, and perhaps direct the group to influencing Williamsburg practices regarding poverty (end of year)
  

Update on the UN's Millenium Development Goals

Someone in my epidemiology class posted this link on our class blog, and I found it very interesting...lots of nice graphs. :-)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6943975.stm

Minutes 9.24.08

Sorry I took so long to get the minutes from last week posted...

9.24.08 MINUTES

Peter Wallentisch—Director of Williamsburg Human Services

· Friday afternoon meeting? ~3:30, 4 October 24

· Thursday afternoon?

Campus Garden

· Tuesdays, 4pm-6pm

· ALL FOOD TO FISH!!!

Housing Partnerships

· **Training Thursday at 7

· Weekends still on

Long’s Winter Break Service Trip

· In Williamsburg…stay at CCM Catacombs (just behind Alumni House on campus)

· January 18^th – January 23rd

· Work with: Housing Partnerships, Head Start

· LET HIM KNOW AT MEETING NEXT WEEK if you are interested

Woolcock Publicity

**Clare Will Write Form Letter this Weekend

2.5-3 weeks prior: Contacting Department—Government (Katie), Econ (Jeewon), Soc (Lisa), Women’s Studies (Lisa), IR (Devin), Global Studies (KB or Clare), Anthro? (Kat), History (Katie), Hispanic Studies? (Kat), ENSP (Clare)

3 weeks: Facebook!!! Clare—event and event summary

2 weeks: Professors—contact anyone who might be interested! Let everyone know once you have contacted one professor

2 weeks: **OSVS—Melody Porter (Emily)

2 weeks: *Ginger Ambler and Taylor Reveley

Flat Hat (Katie)

SA (Clare)

1.5-2 weeks: Other student organizations—SEAC (KB and Clare), SSDP (KB), APO (Long), Wesley (Emily), TLSC (KB), CKI (Kat), Vox (Lisa), Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance (Lisa), Student Organization for Animal Protection (Lisa), HOPE (Long), CCM (Kate), Lutheran Students Organization (Lisa), CPALs (Clare), IR club (Katie), Sharpe (Clare), Young Democrats (KB), Monroe Listserv (Lisa Grimes—Long), Obama Students (Clare)

2 weeks (consistently): Student Happenings, at or near top of e-mails (Long)

1.5 weeks: Flyers—Grace

SC Banner and feltboard—Kate and Grace

In-class announcements—Civic Engagement

IMPACT minutes 9.22.08

Ok. Here it goes:

First, turns out the Housing Partnerships training for this week was Tuesday at 7pm...sorry I didn't get that out earlier. I'm going to send the volunteer coordinator an e-mail letting her know there are three or four people who weren't at either training session but are interested in volunteering and were wondering if they could come this Saturday anyway. I'll let you all know what she says.

Now for the actual minutes:

Updates
James City County Social Services -- Jeewon got in touch with them, but no one who knew the demographics was in. She'll call again when they are there.
Housings Partnerships -- THIS SATURDAY from 8:30am-1pm. Meet in the PBK parking lot. Need to be trained first (see note above).
Make A Difference Day -- Probably not going to do this, because work isn't exactly what we though it would be.
Community Action Agency -- Emily still working on getting in touch with them.
Human Services -- Long still trying to get in touch.
Hospice -- Once again, not quite what was imagined at first (paid service, not free we believe). BUT Lisa mentioned Edmarck, a non-profit organization that does hospice care in the Hampton Roads area. So we will look into that?

Youth Service America
Grace mentioned it. We would develop a project and then submit it to the above organization for a grant to do the project. Potential???

Woolcock Funding/Advertising
Clare will contact Devin about what we currently have, but we still need some as-of-right-now undetermined amount of money.
[note: I cannot find the advertising minutes right now, but I'll send them out as soon as I get my hands on them.]


And that is all!

- Kate

Re: [ihuman] Important Information and Minutes from 9.9.08

So I hope this works...

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get in touch with Sarah, but I still plan on heading over to the Food Bank tomorrow...and I realize this is pretty short notice but if anyone would like to join me please give me a call! My number's 610 308 7161, and I only have one class tomorrow from 2-3:20 so I'm free the rest of the day to go.

Hope everyone's having a fabulous week!

KB

Minutes from 9.9.08

So apparently attachments don't post when e-mailed to the blog...anyway, here are the minutes:

Monday, 8 September 2008 – General Meeting

Kate and Clare started with the Introduction/Framework of IMPACT humanity

• IMPACT humanity’s primary mission is to help mitigate poverty in our (the
  Williamsburg) community
  - Our focus, at least for this semester, is on local poverty issues, though we will
  address some principles of global poverty and efforts against it later in the year
• In order to be able to address local poverty, we will be learning about poverty in the
  area through working with local organizations that serve the poor and the
  economically disadvantaged in Williamsburg and James City County
• Three general things will come out of these service experiences:
  · We will become more educated about poverty in Williamsburg
  · We can then act on this knowledge against poverty in the Williamsburg
  community
  · We will then be able to teach the greater William and Mary community what we
  have learned

Jeewon and Grace continued by talking about the Research/Reasons Behind Service with Pre-existing Organizations

• Research will be done by teams who will focus on work with a particular organization
• These teams will then teach the rest of the group what they learned through the
  service education experience
• Reasons for Working with Other Organizations
  - To learn about what is already being done about poverty in Williamsburg
  - To better understand the causes of poverty in Williamsburg
  - To understand better what we can do to contribute to the efforts already being
  carried out by other organizations

Katie and Karen then discussed Organizations We Will Work With

• Housing Partnerships
• Avalon
• Head Start
• Food Bank
• Dream Catchers
• Tutoring at local churches hosting programs for elementary school children in need of
  tutoring (branching off of a Sharpe scholars program from last year)

Long and John presented an Example of What We Mean (Lackey Free Clinic) – see Long’s e-mail/post for more information

Important Information and Minutes from 9.9.08

Hello to everyone!

Thanks to all who came out this Monday! For those of you unable to make it, you missed out on a very informative meeting (and some really good cookies), but I wrote it all down in the minutes just for you.

Some IMPORTANT INFORMATION...
- Our website (all minutes will be posted here, as well as relevant articles/"reports") --> www.wm.edu/so/impacthumanity
- If anyone is interested in going to the Food Bank, contact KB (kebrower@wm.edu).
- High Impact Ultimate Frisbee – THIS Thursday (9/11) at 10pm in the Sunken Gardens

NEXT WEEK's General Meeting
- When: Monday, 15 September 2008; 8pm
- Where: Tucker 114
- We will have a comprehensive list of organizations and will continue to split into groups.
- KB and Sarah will speak about the Food Bank OR Grace and Jeewon and Kat will speak about Dream Catchers.

Have a wonderful week!

Kate Chelak
Chair of Communications
klchelak@wm.edu

~~~
The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit. [nelson henderson]