Notes from the Road: Hoopin' it up...

Last Saturday, I was invited to come to a basketball tournament at Bruce Randolph Middle School with one of the Colorado HAWKS teams playing in it. I brought my two boys to the game and they have never been so quiet! They were in awe of the very tall 12 and 13 year olds playing some great basketball. I'm 6'2' and felt small too. However, if that is what it takes to get the Wolff brothers to take a break from the seemingly continual conversation we have, I'll bring them back every weekend to watch a game.

Greg Willis is the ED of the program and was also coaching the team. I met many of the kids on the team and came away impressed with their confidence, maturity, and politeness (as well as how talented they are). The sense of community was strong in the gym with a constant buzz of conversation between the kids, coaches, and parents. It was just a great example of how athletics at a local level can help build community and build lives.

The mission of the Colorado Hawks is to create an opportunity and an alternative to gangs for at-risk, disadvantaged youth. They provide a year-round, culturally diverse, educational and basketball program for 200 boys and girls aged 10-17 years. The program draws to it youth who need assistance academically and socially to achieve self-sufficiency and productive lives. The ninth and tenth graders practice and compete April through August, and then play on their high school team September through March. The fifth through eighth graders play year-round. In 2002, over 80% of the kids in the program received college scholarships. Westword named it the best nonprofit athletic progam in Denver in 2004 and HAWKS won the El Pomar Foundation Award for Excellence in 2005! Check out their website at www.coloradohawks.org or give Greg a call at (303) 393-4475 to see how you can help.

- Jesse

Notes from the Road: Family Self Sufficiency

I had the opportunity to visit with Stride today. Located just north of Alameda and Sheridan in Lakewood, Stride has been helping families (90% are single parent) achieve economic self sufficiency for 16 years. They take the long term approach to helping a family move from poverty ($18,000 per year for a family of four) to financial independence. Stride assigns caseworkers to a family for three years to help them permanently exit from the poverty cycle. The Stride program provides some initial money for removing emergency finanical needs but then focuses on providing the family with someplace to go (transitional housing) and connections to services, education and jobs, etc. What impresses me is their very high success rate (500 families served with 70% staying out of poverty). The three year commitment is what they feel it takes for a family to become self sufficient. The leverage can be huge as the grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren are all effected in a positive way and for the long term! Visit www.stride-co.org to see how you can help a proud family get on its feet again. As many of you realize, there is a very fine line (much finer than we often think) between the "haves" and "have nots". It doesn't take much (a medical condition leading to huge bills, a lost job, divorce, etc.) to land someone in a difficult predicament financially.

- Jesse

Habitat House: warmer weather makes all the difference!

You may have read about the Community Shares’ staff Habitat experience on Thursday, February 1 – it was cold, grey and started snowing at about 2:30 pm. Even with longjohns on under our jeans and ski socks, we were still cold and shaking. I wasn’t sure if this was for me – at least not in February! However, the weather took a turn for the better, and after volunteering on Thursday, Saturday was absolute heaven. The weather was warm, the sun was shining and there was a very productive energy in the air.

The weather was only part of what made volunteering Saturday a wonderful and satisfying experience. The volunteers were all my friends – I recruited, and they came. (Does “If you build it, they will come” apply here?) Many of the crowd already knew each other. Those that didn’t were quickly welcomed and by the end of the day, we were all sharing jokes about the movie “Talladega Nights.”

Everyone donned their fancy safety goggles and hard hats, and this time, we actually put the correct names on our hard hats. (Kyle had the name “Mary” on his hat on Thursday and never responded when people called him that name!) We figured out that if you take off your stocking cap and wear your hardhat directly on your head, it doesn’t fall off as easily when you lean over. There is a lot of leaning over when you are hammering window frames, door frames and wall frames! (And since all of the subflooring was secured down, I couldn’t lose my hardhat in the crawl space, as I had on Thursday.)

Seven wall frames were built, and six of those had to have windows and/or doors put into them. Again, very satisfying to start with just subflooring at the beginning of the day and end the day with 7 walls up – ok, 6 walls and one wall frame -- satisfying nonetheless.

Part of what also made it such a great day is the supervisors that are employed by Habitat – they are not only skilled in home construction, but they are really good at working with people like me who don’t use a hammer on a regular basis and who have no idea how to read a home blueprint design. It takes a special kind of person to get 5 giggly women – two with gorgeous fingernails – to use all of their arm strength to build frames and lift up heavy pieces of plywood. Many of us had sore arms the next day. At one point, the side of the duplex with the most women volunteers had more walls up than our guy friends on the other side – and we made sure to point that out to them.

As I wrap up, I want to once again thank my friends for all of their hard work and incredible energy. Thanks also to the Habitat guys – Spencer, Brady and Adam, who put up with our silly jokes all day, and still motivated us to build 7 walls from scratch. Thanks to Habitat for all the good work they do, and for providing this opportunity.

- Mary

CSC Staff hammers Habitat House....

The hardy team of Community Shares enthusiastically embraced our sponsored Habitat House on a very cold and snowy first day of February. Marty, Alyssa, Mary, Jesse, Kyle and I, along with CSC board member Greg Trainor, wore our nail pouches with pride as we hammered, sawed, carried, cut twice/measured once, slipped, and froze our way to finishing up the subfloor and door/window frames for the house.

Everybody's individual talents really shone on the different projects we worked on. Marty "Numbers" Kennedy took charge of any project requiring measuring or counting out studs for framing. Jesse proved he was the glue that holds us together by laying down beads of adhesive for the subflooring. Kyle and Alyssa built access panels to the crawl spaces beneath the floor. (Does that mean they're subversive or excellent at forging into unknown territory? You decide.) Mary and I got to crown studs for most of the morning. That's a real job, we swear! Email me and I'll tell you how it's done.

I think these photos really say it all. Those are not Kyle's every day glasses... he just likes retro look safety glasses.

- Beth

Habitat House: the first day of work

Alyssa and I arrived at the Habitat House at 9AM this morning for the first day of volunteer work along with eight of our friends. The snow was coming down at a steady pace and the bitter cold had us anxious to get to work so we could stay warm. Some of the cement for the foundation had already been poured and the rest of the foundation is scheduled to be completed on Tuesday. Much of our day was spent clearing snow and moving building materials so construction can continue over the next week as planned.

Sorry, we forgot the camera this time so we don't have any proof of our hard work! We'll be sure to get some photos this Thursday when the whole staff volunteers on the house.

- Kyle

Notes from the Road: Children's Outreach Project

You can't miss the Children's Outreach Project (COP on 8000 Pecos) as it is a large blue and white igloo. Denver has its big blue bear and a big blue igloo. An igloo is a very appropo architectural design in Denver this year! The inside of COP is unique too. Executive Director Stephanie Baer leads a team working with a unique, mixed population of 50% kids with special needs and 50% typical children. There is a fantastic ratio of 3:1 (staff/pupil) at the COP. They need new board members, donated books for their library and a new building. I learned a lot about early childhood education by interviewing Stephanie.

- Jesse

Notes from the Road: Association for Senior Citizens

This morning I met with Tee Tanaka, associate ED at the Association for Senior Citizens (ASC). Tee has traveled all over the world as an international banker. He led trade missions to Asia for former Colorado governor Roy Romer. Today, Tee works on providing a variety of services to local senior citizens in need. ASC has a food bank serving over 200 people a week and they just purchased a facility for housing. It isn't sexy but it is an essential service for others at its very core. As our population ages, more and more seniors will need support for their basic living needs. Unfortunately, my experience has been that this can be a "forgotten" generation with little resource allocation. Liz Cahill, Executive Director, started the ASC 20 years ago and has often gone without pay for weeks at a time in order to keep the doors open... Click on link above to contact ASC if you want to help.

- Jesse

Notes from the Road: Centro Humanitario

2007 is here and I wanted to renew my commitment to learning more about the issues and challenges that face our 121 partner member nonprofits this year! I plan on hitting the road each week to visit 2-3 nonprofits and will post what I learn here. Hopefully it will provide you with some inspiration, ideas and calls to action.

Today I visited Centro Humanitario para los Trabajadores and met with Harold Lasso, program & policy director, who has spent his life working on migrant worker issues. 90% of Centro clients are homeless at some point yet they want to work and learn new skills so they come to Centro Humanitario to help break the poverty cycle. The center serves over 1,000 people per year, placing them in jobs, providing skills training, and protecting their rights as legal citizens/workers. They work out of a converted garage that has almost no heating in the winter and no cooling in the summer. Check out my interview with Harold. Maybe there is something you can do to help.

- Jesse