My Workplace: Tuesday Oct. 11th

My workplace is called La Familia Resource Center and basically it is a place where teenagers go to hear sessions about different things in life and they learn how help their community with the help of other peers. It is a medium sized business because there is also other programs there that help the community and it is in the middle of the neighborhood. My workplace is located on Fuller Ave and A St and it is a light orange building with a window sort thing on a tower in the front and it says the name of the programs that are there. There is about ten people that actually work there but throughout the whole day there is people who drop by to help with what is needed and to drop of donations to the programs. My workplace employs mostly college graduates or recent students that have graduated out of high school to go work with other students or file their papers. Most of the people at my workplace have 4 year degrees or a 2 year degrees in different universities across the state. My workplace basically serves everyone in the whole community or the people who are really in need like family's with no money or food, we do toy drives for those families who don't have toys for their kids and all of this is donated by companies or other members of the community. The strengths in my workplace is that a lot of the students take leadership in these events they plan everything, get the contacts and actually attend the events not just to get their community hours done but to actually help the community. A weakness to my workplace is that my mentor is actually barely starting there as a head leader so she is basically barely getting set in her new position so everything right now is kind of sloppy like the things that she has to do and organizing the dates of the events that they have so they wont feel to stressed out.

My Mentor

    My mentor is Wendolyn Gonzalez and she is the head director of Hijos Del Sol youth program. Her everyday schedule is basically the same almost everyday prepare a lesson for the day and review the curriculum that she is going to teach, check email and go to meetings with those of the community. Wendolyn studied about youths for the 4 years in college so she wanted to see what it was like working with youth and she needed at least a Bachelors but she feels like she needs her masters to get the work done well.

My Role

    At my WLE I did not have a main responsibility I did many different job. Some tasks that I completed were organizing, creating or fixing flyers, help move offices, attended meetings, did different types of research and helped at different events.Sometimes I had to answer the phone or call people to inform them about different events or the different services that we provide like English classes, zumba classes which basically are dancing classes and english classes and they are all free and for the community. Recently I had to answer phone calls and write down their information and I did this for 185 families who need toys for their kids.

Project Brainstorm

For my WLE project I am thinking of doing a Facebook page for the HDS youth group to inform everyone of upcoming events and all the information so people of the community could attend and help out as well. I came up with this idea when my mentor told me that no one was showing up to the youth group no more and she needed them to show up because she was not getting any more help in the events and she had no other way to communicate to them if they did not show up to the meetings every Wednesday and Thursday. I am excited to do this project because I am going to be able to help my mentor communicate to them as at the same time I am going to be able to go to the events and help out and get to know new people.

Progress on my WLE Project

Today I talked with my mentor about my project and i accepted feedback from her to improve my project in order to make it more effective for her and me. I told my mentor that I was creating a facebook page and adding everybody from her youth group in order to communicate to them, to inform her students when they were about to have events such as fundraisers, car shows and events at the center that they offer.

Leadership Skills

The leadership skills that I use the most at my wle are complete projects effectively and collaborating productively. I am using them pretty well because everyday i have a deadline to meet for the job that i am doing and i have collaborate with the other two interns that they have there helping also so we have to split the work evenly. I could do a better job in thinking critically or communicating powerfully beause i really do not ask for their opinions in my job or do not put my best quality into every single one of my jobs that i do. Completing projects effectively would be the one that my mentor uses the most because she has different goals each day to complete and if she does not meet those goals she will fall really behind.

What I Learned, Reflection

I learned that i could really do a lot of file work and make flyers for events that are coming up because that is what i did mostly every single day. Some of the chalenges that i faced were that i had to make phonecalls and i hate talking to people i did not know so i wrote down what i was going to say and then just read it when they answered the phone and over time i got better at it. My creativity was put to test in this experience when i had to make all the flyers informative and make them catch the readers eyes. My wle affected the whole comunnity because i was the one that answered the phone for the toy drive so if i did not get the information right a family would not get toys for christmas so it really depended on me. Now i know that i really em\njoy helping the community and that it is way easier than i thought to help those in need and im glad there is programs like this out there to help the needy.

Professionalism

In order to get hired at my WLE i had to write my resume and go to several different places to see if they hired interns and it took me a while to find this one because at first they said no but then i talked to person in charge and he gave me the job because i use to go to their youth program. The most effective way of looking for a job and getting hired is by looking ahead of time and going to the bigger companies at first like hospitals or a school even though you may not like the job you have back up in case you dont find another job. I think that being a profesional means that you show up to work well prepared and on time and you do your best on every single task that you are given.

Life at My WLE

As an intern i have improved by showing up to work 20 minutes earlier instead of just like 5 or 10 minutes before my shift and now i actually talk to my mentor more about what she is expecting out of me everyday and how she wants things done. What makes my workplace great is that you get to work for the community and i get to work with people my age so i could really relate to them if they have problems or what they are doing to be successful at school.

The End

I like the whole WLE experience because you get to experience what a job is like and you get to not go to school one day out of the week so its kind of like a break from school and still learning. This will affect my decision next year because i am going to look for a WLE that has to do with i want to do in the future to see if i really want to pick that as my career.