Day 9 Part I

Today is our last day of volunteering and our Service Learning Project has come to an end. Our ending of our time has come in time with Ms. Cherie's retirement. Her last day is November 24th and since next week is Thanksgiving, we decided that today would be our last day. As a gift of our appreciation, Elizabeth, Amy, and I put together a little thank you gift. We gave her a pamper me bath set, that included lotions, scrubs, fragrances, etc.. We gave her the gift at the beginning of our time and she absolutely loved it. She had said that she never buys things like that for herself and she's excited to try out the new products. We took some pictures and talked a little about what she was going to do after retirement. She did inform us that her position had been filled by a lady, Nicole Harris. After that, she did put us to work on our last day. Ms. Cherie had printed out thank you cards for the volunteers in the spirit of Thanksgiving. In which she hand-wrote a little note on about 85 cards. To assist, we folded the cards, labeled envelopes, and stamped them! Thankfully we didn't have to seal them! I think Amy and I folded and stamped our own cards...but we both agreed we liked receiving mail. Her little, but time consuming effort of handwriting each of the cards just shows how much she cares about her volunteers and that also means a lot. She really did make us feel appreciated and I hope we made Ms. Cherie feel appreciated as well. I guess.."time does fly by when you're having fun" and our time quickly came to an end! This is just another chapter ending in my service at HHH, but just as the semester ends. I informed Ms. Cherie to keep me on file for the new volunteer coordinator so I could work out a time for next semester!
Until..next time!! Happy Thanksgiving!

Day 9 Part 2

This is a sweet email from Ms. Cherie..and thought I'd share.

Dear Aileen and Amy,

Thank you for sending the pictures and the link to your blogs. I really appreciated getting to read about your experience with HHH. I’m glad you could see beyond the actual work that you did (most of the time), filing-- to the bigger significance—one, how much help it is to the staff and clinic volunteers to have the files kept in order so that they are easier to use; two, to have some connection with our patients through bits of conversation or seeing snippets of their files; and three, to have some interaction with our paid and volunteer staff to see the care and dedication that brings them here every week. I think you really “got it” and that pleases me greatly. That is my greatest aim for our volunteers.

I love the pictures you sent (well, some of me, not so much), but to have us all together. Thank you so very much for bringing me a gift in the first place—so sweet and thoughtful—and for its being such a lovely bath set. I love it and will enjoy it so much (it’s still wrapped up and looking pretty until I can show it to my husband this Wednesday).

It has been such a pleasure having you volunteer with us and getting to know you. I know very good and special things lie ahead for you.

Love,

Cherie

Day 8

Another day at HHH, today we started just organizing out the files (our babies), they just don't seem to hold up without us! They do seem to hold up alphabetically, but they get so disorganized very fast. After that, we were able to talk to Ms. Cherie for awhile, she informed us that they narrowed down about 80 resumes to 2 great, qualifying individuals for her position as Volunteer Coordinator. They were actually interviewing one candidate that afternoon. There were really no projects set up for us to do...so we joined Elizabeth (also a student at UST) at the sign-in desk. She volunteers weekly as well and runs the sign in desk. She explained to us her job and what her roles were...once the patient signs in, you ask if they have an appointment or not, whether this is their first time, and what they are there for. Either for the health clinic or to see a case manager. There are two case managers, and what they do is evaluate each individuals case and determine what kind of services they are eligible to have. Today was interesting, since we actually received the chance to interact a little with the homeless individuals. When talking to Liz, why some people react certain ways, such as really impatient and to a sense a little rude. Liz explained it as they are people and they feel they deserve the treatment right away. In asking why they don't get jobs..that they are not used to or don't like to be told what to do. It was hard hearing some of their statements, it was raining pretty heavily that day, and I don't remember exactly what was said, but something along the lines that "some of us just don't have shelter for days like these." Just an eye opener that we take the simplest things for granted as such a roof over our head. I hope we get to do more interaction with the homeless people in the future...

Ms. Cherie's last day is approaching, she doesn't have a set date yet. She said she may still have to do the training for whoever fills her position..hopefully she stays until the semester! Liz, Amy and I, are going to get a little gift of thanks for her! Since she's always been so thoughtful... one picture is a picture of a little sign that says "We are Thankful for You." You can't quite see it, but our names are on there under Thursday! :) The other photo is Amy and I sitting at the sign in desk.

Until next time...

Day 7

Today, we got to do something a little more interesting since we are done with the files! So, Ms. Cherie informed us that she will be retiring soon, soon as in before the semester even ends!!! She said that her last day was scheduled for November 26th. A job listing was posted for her spot as Volunteer Coordinator and more than 50 people had already sent in applications and resumes. Our job, to look through the resumes and look for: whether they addressed the job, if they had volunteer coordinator experience, volunteer experience themselves, whether or not there were typos, and finally any other information that stood out. This experience was pretty interesting, by reading over the resumes I learned some tips on the Do's and Don'ts of resume and application sending. Some applicants didn't address the job they were signing up for, which to me seemed like they couldn't take the time to make the change, or that they weren't completely interested in the job. Some wrote pages and pages (which was a turn off), and I couldn't even get through them. On the good note, I did find a few couple resumes that did stand out, they had volunteer experience, volunteer coordinator experience, and had even worked with the homeless services. I also noticed that, the majority of the resumes were female, I only saw about to male applicants from the stack I read. I'm not really sure exactly why this was so, but Ms. Cherie said she noticed that in the past as well.
From this experience, I definitely learned some tips on what and how to write a resume, which I will probably be doing soon. We got through about half of the resumes before our time was up. I wish we could be a part of the interview process as well!!! But probably not, o well, today was a fun day..until next time!!