Crazy Sunday!

We haven't been doing Sunday pick-up days in a while, since we have been getting more clients in during the week. However, lately, we've had such a great inventory of beds from Marriott and other furniture from the plethora of awesome donors that Alicia has been scheduling them. So this Sunday I went (along with my boyfriend) to help out! And it was ridiculous.

On top of having 9-10 clients scheduled for a span of 2 hours, we also had a group of about 30 kids from a youth group in to volunteer. Add on to that the fact that I was running the warehouse, and after 3 hours, I was ready to keel over. But, aside from the exhaustion, the day was great. Almost all of our clients showed up, and the kids were a GREAT help. They managed to move an entire warehouse worth of furniture in about an hour (I shudder to think how long this would have taken the staff/interns to do on our own). And they also got a lot of stuff organized, and help load client's vehicles. All in all, it was a wonderful day! And the ice cream truck even showed up...

Working With Clients

This week, and really all semester, we had some great clients come in to the warehouse. It is so fun to be able to serve these men and women - I get to talk with them and find out more about their lives, and help them pick out the furniture that they will take home. It's awesome to work directly with our clients because I get to see first-hand how excited and grateful they are, and what a difference our organization makes in their lives.

One exciting thing this week is that we actually have too much furniture! Well, we can never have too much to serve our clients, but our warehouse (and our storage warehouse) were about at capacity on Thursday when I got to work. Mind you, both were nearing empty when I left the Friday before. We had some fantastic donors this past week! We've been able to get a lot of clients scheduled, and even have people coming in this Sunday to get their items (which we don't normally do).

It seems like word about A Wider Circle is really spreading, and the results are magnificent.

A Wider Circle

I found out about A Wider Circle last semester, when Mark Bergel (founder), was my professor for Health, Education, and Poverty. From the first day he was teaching our class, his passion and enthusiasm were immediately evident, which got me really interested in his organization. I had witnessed a lot of the poverty that we talked about in our class through my job at the Public Defender Service, and saw his organization as a chance to make a difference in a new way with much of the same population. When it came time for me to find an internship for the spring semester, I immediately thought of Mark, and emailed him to find out what sort of internship opportunities they might have. And, long story short, here I am. I'm interning Thursdays and Fridays, and I look forward to these days all week.

(Josh, another senior at AU, also interns here and writes a blog)

I am working, loosely, as an assistant to the Client Coordinator, Alicia. So, mostly, my time is spent out in the warehouse helping clients do their intake paperwork, choose their items, and load their vehicles. I really enjoy working directly with our clients, it is a great experience to meet these people and see who we are helping first-hand. I also spend a large portion of my time doing more administrative tasks: preparing paperwork for the next day, sending out confirmation/dirctions letters to upcoming clients, etc... I'm also responsible for checking all the car seats and printing out their manuals, so that we're not sending out any seats that are too old/not safe. I do lots of other stuff, too, but those are the things I do every day.