"Never Talk Defeat. Use Words Like Hope, Belief, Faith, Victory." ~Norman Vincent Peale

It was another short week, because of the President's Day holiday (which the staff got off of work!  YAY!).  Here's a few things going on this week.

New Student!

We have a new 5th grader!  He started yesterday and he seems really sweet.  Unfortunately, I was coordinating, so I didn't get to spend a lot of time with him, but I did check in occasionally, and it seemed like one of our very regular, expected volunteers was taking him under his wing.  It's no wonder the kids think of this volunteer as like an older brother. :-)

ATTITUDES!

Our older kids especially are getting a little too entitled for our liking.  Trying to find loopholes in the rules.  Complaining about something to the point that several of them refuse to participate (which often makes it difficult, if not impossible, for everyone else to participate!).  And when we do give them options and follow through on some of their choices, they complain about that!  

How do you deal with junior high attitudes?  You know the ones:  Where it's cool to think that nothing is cool?  I know it's a very important, sensitive, life directing time, but it's also very annoying!  Junior High teachers, school administrators, and leaders of all kinds have always had my utmost respect.  They are very brave individuals.

Random Guy-- Encouraging Hope

Yesterday I was coordinating and it was the day for our Garden Workshop.  I walked a Kindergarten-aged student who came late over at one point, and I noticed an older guy watching us from his car.  As I walked away from the Garden after dropping the kid off, and I saw that this guy was now out of his car.  It looked like he was waiting for someone in the neighboring apartments, and watching the class just because it was the only thing to see in the neighborhood.  This guy was middle-aged, bigger, wearing a tank top, a baseball cap, and a lot of tattoos.  I greeted him on my way out of the garden, making eye-contact so he knew that I was watching.  And then he turned out to be really friendly!  He started talking about how great it was that we were doing that for the kids.  He mentioned that he grew up in Pomona and has lived in San Dimas for 25 years now, because he had to get away.  I told him I did the opposite.

But he seemed really encouraged by what we were doing, and kept saying that he thought that the reason so many kids join gangs in the area is because they don't get the love that they need at home, so it was good that we were offering that love to the neighborhood kids, just in case any of them are missing that love.

Took this picture immediately after the conversation.

That conversation, which started out potentially scary, ended up putting me in a good mood AND gave me a lot of hope for our kids' futures.

Fundraising Campaign
Is going well!  But I still need about $900 more dollars coming in monthly (on a regular basis... it really is easier to calculate that way).  Please, please PLEASE share either of the two links below with your friends!

For easy, one-time donations: http://pomonahope.causevox.com/

To sign up for recurring donations, or just one time with no extra frills (directly through our website): http://www.pomonahope.org/donate/donate-online/
But for this one they need to remember to type "Kids Coordinator" in the comments box!

THANK YOU!!!!

"Hope Secretly Feeds and Strengthens Promise." ~Sri Chinmoy

This week went by fast!  I don't know if it was because of the fact that we only had kids for two days, that I was frantically trying to catch up after being home sick last week, that I had two volunteer trainings, or because of house stuff (plumbers, electricians, moving tomorrow, in theory), but there just wasn't enough time.

Oh but first,

Happy Valentine's Day! / Singles Awareness Day! / Arizona Statehood Day! / Anna Howard Shaw Day! / Birthday?

Sick!  Yuck.
Unfortunately, I had to stay home sick last week on the day that the first of several volunteer training sessions happened.  I woke up that Wednesday morning at 4 with a 101.3 fever.  Yuck!  I felt so bad about not being able to go in, since I knew they were already short on volunteers and there was a volunteer training which *I* was supposed to be running (and, luckily, had already prepared for), so I still did the volunteer schedules (mostly because it would have been more work for me to remember what all was happening and type it out, than it would have been for me to just add and subtract names from the pre-made schedule, but partly because I still couldn't sleep).  In a rare moment (for me) of getting things done early, I had the schedules finished before I was even supposed to start work that day!  Which was great, because then I took NyQuil and fell asleep for the rest of the day.

Trainings
Speaking of volunteer trainings, Emily took over that first one for me.  I'm so glad she was able to do that!  How did she do this by herself all those years?!  I don't remember the program closing because she was sick very often.

Anyway, I did 2 more trainings this week, although one was kind of an accident.  No one had officially signed up for Monday, so I wasn't expecting to actually train anyone that day.  But one person whose emails back and forth with me were left off somewhat ambiguously did come, so I trained her.  And man am I glad I did!  She really seemed to pick up on everything quickly!  I'll think she'll be a great addition to our volunteers.  And I realized that it was also nice to have the practice before going into the training with several people the next day.

The second training was Tuesday, and it included 2 returning volunteers and 3 new volunteers!  We actually ended early, and since their rides weren't coming until the advertised time of completion, we got to hang out for awhile.  I really like them!

Jeff also trained several new high school students that same day, and one came to help out the next day!  He was so excited about it!  And his coming was actually a huge help, since at one point, I was the only adult in the room with our K-3rd graders.  They were really well-behaved that day (I think they took pity on me), but it was still nice to have the extra set of hands.

All that was to say that I'm really excited about all the new volunteers, and they seemed excited too.

House Stuff
Plumbers
Electricians
Packing
Cleaning
Organizing
Constructing Bookcases

I don't want to actually move.  I just want all my stuff to magically be right where I want it in the new house.  And clean and organized.  Let's pray for that miracle to happen, shall we?

Also, moving day is tomorrow.

Fund Raising
I have spammed many people on Facebook, and I am truly sorry for that, but I wanted to be sure everyone saw the need for donations.  Facebook is weird about who actually sees what posts on their newsfeed, but the messages usually go through.

I've had a great response to the fund raising attempts!  Thank you so much to all of you who have donated!  It means so much to me, and it also means that I can still help with the kids!

I only need another $900 per month consistently.  That number looks bigger written than it did in my head.  But honestly, it's less than what I had to raise before!  :-)

But if you want to share something with your friends, I don't mind at all: Send them here, please!

Funny Story
I've mentioned before that a wonderful group of people, led by a former volunteer, thankfully took over creating the art curriculum for the Troopers and Braves (K-3rd grade) for me this year.  Angels!

This week, in honor of Valentine's Day, they baked another bunch of cookies, all heart-shaped, to be decorated during the art portion of the day on Wednesday.

Well, silly me, I didn't look at the folder that they gave me at the beginning of the month which included a coloring page for the kids to complete once they finished decorating their cookies.  The decoration part only took about 5 minutes.  After that, I improvised.

Since there weren't quite enough cookies for all the kids to have 2, they each only got one.  When they were done, I got out another one and asked them how we should decorate Kevin's (my boyfriend, who volunteers with them a lot) cookie.  The result is below.

Mine is on the left.  I am not silly enough to let the kids choose what goes on it.

When we were done with Kevin's cookie, there was still time and a whole bunch of Red Hots left, so they all went on the cookie that the kids made for Junior (another awesome volunteer whom the kids think of as a big brother).  Unfortunately, no picture.  Just picture one of the above cookies piled to the point of overflow with Red Hots.

Workshops
Today is the first Friday workshop in partnership with the dA Center for the Arts in Pomona.  They're coming to teach our junior high and high school students about art from all over the world.  It should be starting any minute now.

My Friday workshop (the Math/Art for 4th-6th grade) is going well.  Last week was sparsely populated because I was sick before that.  I think the kids expected I wouldn't come.  I've found that they like researching things for themselves the best.  They'll complain at first, but when I tell them that all they have to do is learn about stuff in a certain subject and look for something that's interesting, or a quick answer to a question, they get really involved in learning all about whatever subject it is.

A rare photo of the kid in the middle.

He's catching up... hanging out with his little brother.

Three weeks ago they broke into groups and had to share their answers with each other.  Each group was assigned two ancient civilizations for which they were supposed to find how to write the numbers 1-10 in that language.  Two weeks ago, they started trying to figure out whether the Ark really could hold all those animals, based on the measurements given in the Bible.  Hopefully, by the end of today they'll have a definitive answer.  And luckily, they're the ones doing the math. ;-)

Bible story for the K-3rd grade... guess which one!

Rosie comes to work with me sometimes when there's no kids.
She hates my office.

The whole quote: "Hope knows no fear.  Hope dares to blossom even inside the abysmal abyss.  Hope secretly feeds and strengthens promise." ~ Sri Chinmoy

Seemed appropriate.

“Hope is a Force of Nature. Don't Let Anyone Tell You Different.” ~Jim Butcher

So... I bought a house.

Anyone who can find this place is invited to the housewarming party (TBD)

It's a Miracle
I obviously did not do it on my own (it wasn't even my idea originally), but with the help of my dad, my amazing real estate agent, who has basically adopted me, even my co-workers, who were ready to cover for me when I had to drop everything immediately to take care of whatever crazy thing came up next (seriously, my real estate agent even admitted that this was one for the books), I bought a house.

This is also why the blog has been quiet.  I'm pretty sure I was losing my mind, and even if I had the time to sit down and write, I don't think you would have needed to read what I had to say when I was in that state.  But now that it's over, I'm just realizing that it really was the house drama.  I didn't think it was, I thought it was just the icing on the cake, but now I really think it was the trying to buy a house for so long and not getting it-- it was slowly eating away at me.  Now that it's over, nothing seems as bad anymore.

What does this have to do with my work at Pomona Hope?  Well, I definitely would not have even considered it if I wasn't working here.  When I was in graduate school, one of the articles I read an article called, " A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures" by C. Tiebout (pronounced tee-bow, like a hair bow) in 1956, which laid out what is now known in the Public Policy world as the Tiebout Model.  Without getting too into it (I hope) and boring anyone reading this, the model basically says that in a perfect world, people would vote with their feet-- meaning that if they didn't like the way a city, state, country, etc. was run (mostly city level though), they would just move.  After I read that, I realized that yeah, we do get to vote, but sometimes the vote doesn't go the way we want it to, and there is the very real possibility that it would go so far against what I wanted it to, that I would not want to live there anymore.  And it's way easier to move if you don't actually own anything.  (But it also turns out that you're way more likely to want to move if you live in an apartment complex with 100 inconsiderate neighbors vs. the possibility of maybe 5 neighbors who could potentially be inconsiderate.)

Anyway, I'd basically resigned myself to never owning a house (unless I won the lottery or married rich) because it was all too expensive for me anyway.  But then I got this job, and I knew what community I wanted to be in.  And I knew that things were bad here already, and I still wanted to fight for it to get better (sorry, Tiebout).  And whoever heard of a missionary who didn't live where they worked anyway?!

Of course, I didn't actually come to the realization of any of this until my dad said one day, "You should think about buying a house.  Tom says that the housing market is really cheap in Pomona right now."

I blew him off for the first couple weeks.  But I also thought about it.  I finally had to tell him, when he brought it up again, that even if I wanted to buy a house, there was no way I could afford the down payment, the closing costs, whatever it cost to fix the place up to livable, etc.  I could maybe afford the monthly payment if I had a roommate, and at that point, the main thing pushing me to even consider it was that the rent was going up again (consistently $100/mo. more every year) and the roommate I had was moving out.  So, he generously agreed to help out.  So glad he was there for the actual buying process!

So the hunt began in May.  I went through 6 real estate agents before finding one that would actually bother with anything in my price range... literally the bottom of what's selling now-- I have so many horror stories.  Not just of houses.  Of the entire process.  I still don't fully understand it, and I think that having been so out of control of the entire process made me desperately want to be in control of everything else, when I really wasn't the take control kind of person.  So when everything else wasn't going perfectly, I didn't adapt well.

This is a good thing to remember in times likes these.

I will not bother you with all the stories unless you ask.  Partly because I don't really want to think about them anymore, and partly because it would take you at least an hour to read them all, and me even longer to type them.  And I have a lot of other stuff to tell you about what's actually happening at the program!

The big news is:  I bought a house!  I now have literal ownership of my mission, and it's in the same neighborhood as many of my kids.  It's walking distance to work, folks.


Math Art Journals
You know those Indiana Jones Math Art-type journals I was talking about teaching to the kids awhile back?  Well, I started on January 10th.  Every Friday, most of my 4th-6th graders come in the afternoons to do this workshop.  It's only been a few weeks, but they really seem to enjoy it.  I've found something interesting about my kids too.  No matter how much they complain about you giving them an assignment, if they get to do some kind of research and they don't have to come up with the perfect answer, they really get into learning.  Last week, they started researching/doing the math to find whether or not all the animals Noah was supposed to pack really could fit on the Ark.  The first half is done: they figured out how big the Ark was.  Just so you know, I haven't actually done this math either, so I'm not sure what they'll come up with.  But the Bible gives specific measurements (although the kids have to convert them to something they understand), and it's possible to figure out (yay Google!) how many animals actually would have needed to ride the Ark.  So, they'll come up with something... stay tuned.

House Cleaning
Don't be fooled into believing everything is perfect all the time.  There has been a lot of drama, and we had to do some house cleaning, but I don't think it's right to go into any details, to protect kids and families involved.  But as a staff, we've learned that we really need a form to record everything.  And it's not just to protect us as an organization, but also our kids and our volunteers.  It sucks that it's necessary, but I guess that's the world we live in.

Volunteer Coordinators
This will probably be confusing because I am the Volunteer Coordinator for Pomona Hope, but Emily learned when she was doing everything that it was easier for her to have one contact person for the bigger organizations that are supporting us with volunteers (schools and churches mostly).  These people are volunteer Volunteer Coordinators.  The one with the most difficult job I think is the one for the Claremont Colleges.  That's 5 schools of college students to keep track of!  And most of these students don't drive, or if they do, don't have cars.  So not only does this person have to keep track of our largest volunteer base and report to me on who is coming on which day, but they also have to find rides for the volunteers, make sure everyone coming in the same car can stay for the same amount of time (at a time when we actually need that many people), etc. etc. etc.  It's NOT an easy job.  And they do it for my eternal gratitude.

I started out the year with one of our former interns being the Coordinator for all of the 5C's, but she had to go and get a really awesome study abroad assignment in Ecuador.  So, I was on the hunt for someone else who could do the job (while planning advent stuff, helping with Christmas stuff, still doing my regular job, and buying a house... can you see why I was stressed?).  I couldn't find any one person who thought they could do the whole job well.  And as big a bummer as that was, I was actually really grateful for the honesty.  And LUCKILY, I found two people who thought that they could do a good job with two different parts of the assignment.  And so far, they're doing an awesome job!  I'm so excited!

Also, through this whole process, I've discovered the wonders of Google Drive, because of a former volunteer coordinator.  Did you know that you can create surveys on Google Drive for free?  Ask as many questions as you want, have certain answers take you to different questions, and have it all automatically update a spreadsheet for your convenience!  WHAT?!  That was what a former volunteer coordinator used, and it was genius.  I spent an entire evening trying to figure out how to link SurveyMonkey answers to a spreadsheet and trying to figure out how to get all the necessary information out of 10 questions so I wouldn't be charged, and it turns out I had the capability all along!   I think I may try to have all my potential volunteers fill out surveys after this year ends.  Keep the information centralized.

I'm also gonna start making random surveys in my free time.  So, be prepared. (Don't worry too much, I just bought a house.)

Fundraising
I found out last week that Pomona Hope only has enough money to continue paying me at full time for 2 more months.  After that, I'm not sure what happens.  I may be cut back to half time.  I honestly don't know how everything will get done if that happens.  So, since I don't really have time to get grants, and most of my salary is fundraised through individual donors anyway, I'm wondering if anyone out there has any new ideas?  Because I'm running out.

I've started a crowdfunding site, so please share it with your friends who might be interested in making sure our kids get the best attention we can give them!  Thank you!!!

Pomona Hope Kids Coordinator Campaign

K-3rd Art
This is pretty much the only thing I have pictures of, so have some pictures of cute kids decorating cookies for MLK Jr. Day!