St. V's Health Fair

On Thursday, fellow VISTA Maureen and I set up a table at St. Vincent's Mercy Medical Center for a health fair called "Covering the Uninsured."

It was a packed house of agencies and a steady stream of people coming through. We actually ran out of our giant stack of brochures and I had to run back to the office and get some more.

Van Wert Expo

Early Wednesday morning, fellow VISTA Maureen and I journeyed, bleary-eyed, the two hours to Van Wert to observe fellow VISTA Sharon (of Lima's West Ohio Food Bank) and our regional coordinator Gayle conduct the first Ohio Benefit Bank Expo of the season.

Expos are events that introduce agencies in under-served OBB counties (counties with very few OBB locations) to what OBB is, explain how they can become a site, and how OBB can be used as a tool within their current operations

The nearest OBB sites to Van Wert are about 20 miles away, so it would be cool if some of the people who attended decide to become trained as counselors, giving folks in town somewhere a little closer to find help.

Here is Russell, one of OBB's Mobile Enrollment Specialists, giving a tour of the OBB Mobile Unit to some of the Expo attendees.



The Mobile Unit drives around the state, setting up shop at various events and doing applications right on the bus. You can read more on its blog here.

Now Maureen and I have to take what we learned from watching in Van Wert and apply it to our own Expos. We have three to plan and host: Wood County in May, Fulton County in June and Henry County in July.

And lots of outreach/preparation work to be done in those counties before then.

Wood County

Earlier this week, I attended a day-long training seminar in Bowling Green called Wood County No Wrong Door.

This was the event I was supposed to attend on April 15 when I stayed back in Toledo to do taxes instead.

The premise of No Wrong Door is that every social service agency should learn about the services found at other agencies in the area, so that no one seeking help is ever turned away with a "Sorry, we can't help you" but instead is pointed to somwhere that can.

The most useful part of the training -- besides all the awesome resource guides that we will definately be utilizing in planning future events and outreach in Wood County -- was all the instruction on talking with someone in need.

Engage. Direct. Assure.

The ENGAGE portion involves listening and asking useful questions like What county do you live in?, Is there a minor, senior or veteran in the household?, What other agencies did you already call and what did they tell you?, Do you have a shutoff/eviction notice?

After you've gathered all the necessary information, offer them services or DIRECT them to the most pertinent agency.

And finally, ASSURE them by giving them your name and number and telling them to call you back if they have trouble reaching the agencies you directed them to or if those agencies can't help.

That last step makes people feel like someone cares, that someone isn't just pointing them somewhere else and washing their hands of the matter, but is offering further assistance, and is there to work with them toward meeting their needs.

We have actually already reguarly been doing the last step, but it felt good to be validated in that. So that was cool.

However, the bad news for our outreach future in Wood County is that much of it appears to be inaccessible by GPS.

Fellow VISTA Maureen and I have tried on several occasions to lccate different agencies only to find that the GPS brings us to a residential neighborhood or, as pictured below, what is supposed to be the Wood County Health Department in what is actually an empty field.

Mysteries...

Idol Gives Back / Year of Giving

I wanted to quickly share two projects -- one taking place on a national stage, one an individual endeavour -- that I've learned about recently.

The big one is Idol Gives Back, a yearly offshoot of the TV show American Idol, in which money raised goes to charities.



This year, one of the five charities is Feeding America, the nation's leading domestic hungar-relief organization and the nonprofit my Americorps organization is a member of. Yay!

This year's other charities are: The Children's Health Fund, Malaria No More, Save the Children, and the United Nations Foundation.

Idol Gives Back, which airs tonight, actually started back in 2007, but I've never paid much attention to American Idol until this year, when I finally tuned in out of curiousity that one of the finalists was Crystal Bowersox, a girl I went to church and school with through about mid-high school.

(Photo courtesy of Fox)

I haven't talked to Crystal in years and don't profess to be her friend or know her, but her grandparents still go to the church I grew up in and where my parents still attend. I remember her singing and playing guitar at church camp in middle school (great voice and same style of music even then), and when she was diagnosed with diabetes in grade school. I guess it's just cool to see a talented, hardworking, grounded person come out of humble, rough beginnings and succeed and be appreciated for who they are. I'm definitely rooting for her.

The other project I recently heard about is called the Year of Giving.

(Photos from Year of Giving blog)

A 30-something guy in DC lost his job last year and decided to spend the year giving away $10 a day to someone he met around the city.



He spends times talking to each recipient and blogging about their stories.

Most are interesting and some are pretty inspiring, like the waiter trying to stay sober. Others are controversial, like an artist who ripped up the bill on camera and provoked tons of comments. He even keeps stats, like demographics of the recipients and how they plan to use the money.

Check it out.

April 15

(Photo courtesy petranorris.com)

After the craziness of taxes back in February followed by almost no calls in March and the first week and a half of April, I guess I naively started thinking that taxes were going to go out with a whimper instead of a bang.

Silly me.

I definitely underestimated how prone to last-minuteness people are.

Sidenote: Yes, I know I am a huge procrastinator myself. But one would think that if you know the entire COUNTRY has the same deadline for something, you might assume things are gonna get busy and act accordingly...

But oh well.

Starting about April 13 and through mid-afternoon on the 15th, our voicemail box started to get flooded with calls from people needing tax appointments.

At first we did what we always do -- referred people to Ohio Benefit Bank sites nearest to their zip codes.

But then we started getting calls back saying the places we'd referred them to were full and not taking any more appointments.

At that point, we decided that, since our schedules are probably more flexible than most OBB sites, it might be easier to just start taking the appointments ourselves and spread around the burden a little bit from our overworked non-profits.

However, fellow VISTA Maureen and I (stupidly?) had planned to be out of town on April 15 at an event in Wood County.

In the end, we decided it didn't make sense for both of us to go. We agreed she would go to the event alone and I would stay behind in Toledo and offer myself as a last-minute resource for tax filing.

After returning all the messages, I started thinking it wasn't going to be as bad as I thought. A couple just had questions and several had already found an appointment elsewhere (hopefully not a paid service...).

On the morning of the 15th, I only had one appointment: plans to meet my first client at 10 am at a library near his home in South Toledo. I thought it might have been a waste for me to stay behind.

The South Branch Library.

But as the day went on, I got one call, and then another, then another, and I ended up working straight through until 10pm, filing taxes for 7.5 families.(The 0.5 comes from the family who got halfway through before I discovered they owed rental properties, which the OBB does not support...crap.)



I ended up parking myself all day at that same little table at the library where I had my first appointment, doing clients until the library closed at 530 pm.

After the library closed, I picked up and moved down the street to a McDonalds and did two more clients there.



Then I finally moved out of South Toledo for the frist time that day to a coffee shop, where I met one more client before the night was out.



It somehow worked out that everyone who called happened to be just down the street or knew right where I was, so I wasn't wasting time running all over town, tearing down and setting up up my laptop and printer. Everyone just came to me.

As one client said, "Do you believe in providence?"

Even though it was the last day of taxes, I still had some firsts: first person interested in doing back taxes, first person with a spouse in prison (does 20 years count as "temporarily absent" from your home? haha), and -- oddest of all -- first person who didn't want to claim her children as dependents.

Well, technically, she couldn't claim them, because she lost their social security numbers, but she said she hadn't claimed them for years. Something about her refund getting was going to be eaten by student loan debt anyway, so she wanted to give the goverment as little as possible. Which doesn't make sense, since she'll have to pay it off someday somehow anyway. I tried to explain how much better it would be for her to claim her children. How most people joke about trying to claim dogs, cats, etc. But she insisted she didn't want to, hasn't for years, and I should just send it along. Ugh. It pained me to do so, but she is the boss. Sigh.

I finally made it home long after dark with tired eyes and a dull brain. But with a good feeling about a productive day.

I collpased into bed and took the next day off.

Spring has Sprung!

Trees have been budding out almost overnight around Toledo, rendering the most unexpected places rather beautiful -- like this view of the street outside the food bank.

Justice is not served by this poor camera phone photo, but the striking pale colors around town just makes everything a smidge happier and tends to put a spring (hah) in your step.

Here's the trees outside my apartment:



It reminds me of how this is the prettiest season on the Ohio Wesleyan campus, as if each year it dresses up extra beautiful just in time for graduation.

(Photo courtesy OWU)

EDIT:

HOWEVER, Spring also brings with it the not-so-appreciated orange barrels and road work ahead signs....sigh.

That's a Lot of Food...

As of March 23, 1.134 MILLION pounds of food have passed into and out of the Toledo Northwestern Ohio Foodbank since Jan. 1.

Apparently that's DOUBLE the amount year-to-date last year.

Crazy.

Long-awaited Updates

It's been more than a month since I've updated. Long enough that my adoring public -- well, technically my parents, grandparents and co-worker Maureen -- are wondering what's up.

Here are the highlights:

1. The biggest change is probably that, instead of just focusing on Lucas County, Maureen and I are now going to be focusing on SIX Northwestern Ohio counties: Lucas, Wood, Henry, Fulton, Defiance and Williams.



One of the VISTAs recently decided to leave the program early, so we are going to be taking over her counties. Two of them, Henry and Fulton, are very rural and don't currently have much OBB action, so we are going to be focusing heavily on outreach there.

We got some pointers from fellow VISTA Sharon, who heroically covers 11 rural counties by herself, shaming Maureen and I as we recalled whining about how long it took to drive to outlying areas of Toledo for flyering, etc.



2. Planned and hosted an Ohio Benefit Bank regional meeting (see next post).

3. Planned and hosted a tax clinic at Sylvania Area Family Services. The clinic saw a total of 19 clients, including 5 walk-ins, and only 4 no-shows. Of the 18 federal returns the 10 counselors were able to complete, the clients returned a total of $28,570 to the community in returns. Six were eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit, for a total of $4,711. Woo!

4. Worked four other tax clinics: Upper Sandusky, Thomas M. Wernert Center in Toledo, Bowling Green, and Lima.

When we arrived in Upper Sandusky, we found out there were very few people signed up so we weren't really needed. We contemplated taking extra flyers out into the community and herding some more people in...but we didn't. So it basically became a day where we drove over an hour to eat Mexican food with some fellow VISTAs and then head back. But that's cool :)



The picture above is from the Upper Sandusky clinic. It's hard to see, but I didn't notice until now that there's a tiny H&R Block in the background above the sign hehe.

Surprisingly taxes have really died down. We had a crazybusy February, a mildly busy March and now barely any action in April. I'm speculating that the majority of our clientele would be expecting sizable refunds and want to file ASAP and get it done.

March did see some tax firsts, however: First non-US citizens (international students), first lottery winner with a W2-G.

5. Food stamp outreach: Another visit to Sylvania Area Family Services, this time to help Maureen talk to people about food stamps, etc., during their weekly food pantry distribution. The people were...interesting. Most thought we were there to do blood pressure checks. One guy with a really thick accent turned out to be a Holocaust survivor who'd lost his hearing from machine gun fire in a war (at least I'm pretty sure that's what he said..) There was also a missing-fingered, crazy-talking militia sympathizer who went off on an awkward not-sure-how-I'm-supposed-to-respond rant about Health Care Reform and Third Revolutions and Communists. "They better remember we all have guns." O-Kkkkkk.

6. Random outreach trips to Oregon and Bowling Green. The Oregon one fortuitously brought us into contact with a really cool guidance counselor at Fassett Middle School. He set up a meeting with us and the other counselors in the district to talk about OBB and they might become a site! Yay! That trip also showed us that the reason there are a lack of sites in Oregon is because...there are a lack of places to BE sites in Oregon. Trouble in BG was mainly a list of nonprofits we tried to find turned out to be residential houses...mysteries. But we will regroup, do some more research, and head out again.

7. March seemed to find lots of event cancellations: A tax clinic due to snow, a tax clinic due to lack of signups, two tax trainings due to no signups, two-day CareNet re-enrollment event that was rescheduled.

8. In other news, I got my car back! Better than ever. Yay! Thanks Uncle John!



9. And I baked bread! In the oven. From scratch. How domestic...and delicious :)

Regional Meeting

Fellow VISTA Maureen and I planned and hosted our spring Ohio Benefit Bank Regional Meeting on March 30.

Forty-two people (mainly Ohio Benefit Bank counselors and site administrators from across Lucas County) attended the meeting. My goal was 50, but last time we had 30, so we beat that.

We had five guest speakers:

Julie Grasson from CareNet (sliding-scale fee healthcare for uninsured, low-income Lucas County residents;

Scott Cluckey from Great Food For All (boxed food for anyone (no income limits) at discount prices to strech dollars/food stamp dollars -- he drove 3+ hours to speak, wow! thanks!);

Tiffany Zinn from Northwest Ohio Development Agency (IDA matching funds, housing grants, loans, foreclosure counseling, etc);

Amy Carles from Ohio Consumers' Council (consumer liasons for utility assistance);

and reps from Lucas County Department of Job and Family Services (county office that handles food stamps, medical assistance, etc.)

We were excited to give away four door prizes donated to us by awesome generous donors: gift certificate to Cake in a Cup (cupcake shop); gift certificate to The Andersons; free bread for a year (!) from Country Grains Bread Company; and four Toledo Mud Hens tickets!

We were shocked by that last one, but apparently they get so many requests they enter everyone into a lottery and we won! I can't count the number of places we dropped off request letters to, but it all worked out in the end with some great prizes.

I thought it went off very smoothly. Glad it's over.

Foreign-Made Vehicles Not Allowed

Last weekend, I tabled a health fair at one of the local UAWs, and this sign greeted me in the parking lot.



They were completely serious about it too. Made an annoucement and everything.




The fair was sponsored by the NAACP Women and included an aerobics demonstration,



massages (I really wanted to try one out, but refrained and stayed at my table...),



and CHAIR YOGA! haha. Which I totally did.



I talked to this 68-year old woman from Michigan and ran her through a Quick Check, which showed she would likely be eligible for food stamps. I gave her some contact information, but I don't think she'll call. She said she had savings, even though she admitted she is running them down buying food and medicine. Later I wondered if she was from a generation who would be fixated on the word STAMPS and I should have emphasized that the "stamps" are now loaded onto a debit card and are discreet and easy to use, but I'm not sure it would have made a difference. Sigh. Hopefully she'll be OK.

Bonus: I randomly met all kinds of people I'd only "known" through email and phone communication, so that was worthwhile.

OWU Honored for Service

My alma mater, Ohio Wesleyan University, was recently honored with a prestigious award for community service.

OWU was one of three colleges in the nation to earn a Presidential Award for Excellence in General Community Service as part of the 2009 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll.

Launched in 2006, the Community Service Honor Roll is the highest federal recognition a school can achieve for its commitment to service learning and civic engagement.

Wow, go OWU!

It was gratifying to hear that, especially while currently serving my community fulltime as an Americorps VISTA, because if you know my story, I had no clue where I wanted to go to college or what I wanted to study, but I ended up loving OWU and hearing this makes me feel like I ended up in the right place afterall.

In other news, The Daily Beast (the publication that recently deemed Cincinnati the craziest city in the US) recently named OWU one of the hottest colleges of the decade. Woot woot!

So proud :)

Me on TV

This was me on TV back on February 13:

The segment about the tax clinic we hosted in Maumee starts at 3:25.

Cleveland Miserable, Cincinnati Crazy

Just for fun.

Old news by now, but Cleveland is the most miserable city in the U.S. according to Forbes.com, thanks to its "high unemployment, dismal weather, hefty taxes, corruption and mediocre sports teams."

The rankings are based on jobless rates, inflation, taxes, commuting times, crime rates, performance by the city's sports teams, weather, pollution and corruption by public officials.

"Cleveland nabbed the top spot as a result of poor ratings across the board. It was the only city that fell in the bottom half of rankings in all nine categories," Forbes said on it website.

Also, amongst some debated ranking criteria, Cincinnati has been deemed the nation's "craziest" city based on psychiatrists per capita, stress, eccentricity and drinking levels.