I started volunteering at St. Francis Neighborhood Center in 2013 and then a few months later, there was a position that opened up and I was so impressed with what was going on, I wanted to be part of the team. Now I’m at the point where I’m hiring people to do certain things, because my duties are changing each year.
We have a summer of service excursion which is going on right now. I’m monitoring that, making sure we have the right educational and enrichment programs. I’m also making sure that our parents and our kids are being fed. I’m overseeing drivers who are delivering food to families each day. Our main program is The Power Project, a high-quality after-school program. When everything happened in March and COVID hit, I came up with a plan to get all of our after-school program students laptops. And then within ten days, everybody had laptops and Wi-Fi access.
It’s because we have a real tight relationship with not only the students that we serve, but the families. We’re a tight-knit family and community and we see what happens, you know, when someone’s not getting education over the summer, that summer learning loss is – it’s really bad. And just imagine not having after-school on top of that. So it wasn’t even a question for us that we were going to go virtual, and we just did it in a manner that was really fast and still high quality.
It changed tremendously, you know, our mission statement doesn’t say anything about food distributions or anything like that, we’re about education and resources, and food is a resource. But it wasn’t one of the main things that we did. So we had to pivot to food distribution for the community and our families due to the COVID situation and the fact that we’re living in an area some people will call a food desert. So I’ve been advocating on social media that food access in Reservoir Hill needs to happen. There needs to be a grocery store closer to the heart of this area. I’ve been here for almost ten years and not even a hint of a decent grocery store coming on the west side. So I feel like I want to continue to advocate for that and for this community to get the resources that they should have and stop being neglected by the city.
Torbin Green is the Operations & Program Director for St. Francis Neighborhood Center.
Special thanks to Zaniya Williams for assistance with interviewing and transcription for this story. Photo courtesy of Torbin Green.
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