An early start at Clean Lakes Alliance

I started my placement late March with a light schedule because I was finishing my Spring semester at the same time. The idea was to help CLA to get some documents ready for the summer and start working full time during June and July. My first tasks were to update the Citizen Monitoring Manual, create agendas for each Volunteer Days scheduled during the summer, and enter the date of these events in CLA’s Google Calendar. Administrative tasks are time consuming but necessary steps for the coordination of the team and the volunteers.

The challenging part was to update the Citizen Monitoring Manual because my intentions were to first monitor James Madison Park, then to use this experience to suggest recommendations to improve the monitoring instructions. In reality, CLA needed an updated version before starting the monitoring season. I was able to adapt, and I think that my updates did improve this document. For example, I added a table of contents in order to help volunteers find the specific information they needed more quickly. I also decided to separate nearshore and offshore monitoring to avoid information that they don’t need and the waste of paper. I am planning to discuss with my host supervisor if we can evaluate the success of my updates by asking for feedback from the monitors themselves. I will have more information on this subject in my next reflection post.

Some lessons to learn from the Clean Lakes Alliance Community Breakfast

I had the chance to volunteer during the Clean Lakes Alliance Community Breakfast. My intention was to get familiar with the world of non-profit organizations and build on my network. I was assigned the task of greeting people at the entrance and directing them to the desk so they can get their name tags. At that time, I was still pretty preoccupied with finishing my semester and I came to the event not really informed about the goals of the breakfast or who was going to be present. These circumstances led me to make a mistake: I didn’t recognize the new major when she walked in. I think that being informed and knowing the faces and names of people of influence is super important especially in the world of non-profit organizations. I tend to treat people equally because I think that everybody deserves the same respect and talking about money and power usually makes me uncomfortable. However, I can’t ignore the reality of our world and how non-profit organization rely on donors. It is normal to pay special attention to significant and sustainable donors or people of influence. I clearly remember our teachers repeating during our policy course that it is important to be informed and to know the motivation of the person we want to influence. For my future participation in such events, I will take the time to gather information about the most important guests.

Volunteer Days a work in progress

I have already participated in six Volunteer Days. My mission is to get all the material ready in the morning (water, cereal bar, bug spray, sun screen, t-shirts, etc…). Then, welcome the volunteers at the working sites. I am taking advantage of the time that everybody gathers to interact with the volunteers and explain what is particular about this site or what activity we are going to do today. I use one-page fact sheets as a visual support to start the conversation. One of my deliverables is to create those documents. I was planning to do extensive research about each site and use the message box framework to articulate information. However, I noticed that the time to engage with the volunteers is really short. For this reason, I decided to create more simple documents with less text and historical facts. I realized that the goal of the one-page fact sheet about working sites is to encourage the volunteers to come back to the park and enjoy natural areas. Now my message focuses on one or two cool facts about the park and what the activities are that you can do by using compelling pictures.

Most of the volunteer days went smoothly except for some difficulties in Warner Park. It was sad to witness but the park is clearly located close to a poor neighborhood. I have never seen this aspect of Madison. One of the interns had to constantly keep an eye on the tools and our materiel. We also found really weird items during the litter pick up activity. Throughout the day I witnessed a couple neighbor altercations with people arguing really loudly in the street. I tried to think that what we were doing would improve their community. Most people seem happy to see volunteers, but one person came over to complain that this area was just a breeding ground for mosquitos. He is not completely wrong, but Madison is subject to flooding because there are not enough areas like that to allow infiltration during heavy rains.

The other difficulty in this park was the coordination of activities. For example, the activity of litter pick up made the volunteer group really dispersed. It was hard to provide them with water or bug spray. I think that with a different management we could have avoided this problem. For example, we could have assigned an intern with each group of activity. Each intern would carry water and other important materiel with them to follow their group. I think we didn’t anticipate this problem because we didn’t organize a field reconnaissance meeting with our host site partners. Maybe in the future we can ask for more details from the host site partner about where exactly each activity will take place and if dividing groups is necessary.

Progress meeting with my host supervisor

I conducted my progress meeting with Issis and Luke. I was organized in a sense that I listed the subjects I wanted to talk about. For example, I asked clarification questions about which sites I need to present in the one-page fact sheets. I also, introduced my evaluation plan using the visual support that I have created from a previous homework assignment. I expressed my desire to have more opportunities to conduct oral presentations and facilitate group meetings in order to strengthen my leadership skills. I also summarized the meeting at the end. I think that this progress meeting went well but I could have improved some aspects. For example, I realized that I didn’t bring my phone to look at the time. Issis and Luke are really busy, and I might have gone overtime. I really need to invest in a watch. I should have also created an agenda to divide the time between subjects. The meeting would have been more organized that way. I will implement these observations for my next progress meeting.

Thank you for reading my post! Next post I will tell you more stories about the Volunteer Days, the water monitoring at James Madison Park, and the implementation of my evaluation plan.