The world is so much with us

Hello Everyone,

Okay so I've never blogged before...this is an entirely new experience for me. As you may know by now Anne and Laura are working with the Church of the Brethren here in Cincinnati. They are kept very busy with different projects/planning, etc...They have alot of great ideas about what they hope to accomplish by year's end. I'll let them tell you more about it. Ben is our lone male in the house, but as he has been in BVS before and lived with four other girls (yikes!), he has been able to adjust pretty well as far as I can tell. In last week's blog, Ben shared a little about his experiences at his new job (Interfaith Hospitality Network). It's interesting, don't you think??

Laura, Anne, and Ben truly care about the people they are working for...it shows everytime I talk to them about what they are doing. I'm blessed to be able to share this new experience with them.

As for me, I am working at the Talbert House as the new coordinator of the mentor program for women. It is an inter-agency collaborative comprised of about eight other agencies/programs in Cincinnati i.e. Pathways Halfway House, Rewards Jail Intervention, Alcoholism Council, First Step Home (residential, outpatient, transitional housing for women with substance abuse and their children), Sheriff's Department, etc... They realized that as many of these women were in these programs either concurrently/consecutively, they needed to come together and form a program that would allow for someone (mentor) to help guide these women through the complicated criminal justice system. Incarceration is a revolving door for many people, but it is hoped that this new mentor program will help in reducing Hamilton County's high recidivism rates. It is now my job to get this program up and running.

These past two weeks have been a whirlwind for me. So many new places and new faces. I've been going around to the other agencies we are working with in order to get a feel for what they are doing. So far, I have been over to Pathways, RJI, and the Hamilton County Jail/Pretrial Services. I don't think I will ever forget those experiences. I sat in on some group sessions at RJI (Residential facility for incarcerated women), and the women there welcomed me as though I had known them forever instead of just one hour. I looked around at all of them and it became very personal--as Ben said. I could have been them. A few missed steps and you are in a place in your life that you never thought you would be....

I also had a very eye-opening experience when I was given a top to bottom tour of the Hamilton County Jail. Apparently, due to its size and the amount of prisoners, it is ranked in the top 25 of this country's biggest jails. The officers that showed me around didn't leave anything out. I sat in on two meetings with a narcotics officer and two jail informants. I was taken up to the maximum security part of the jail. There I saw sex offenders, murderers, men on suicide watch, and even a serial killer awaiting trial for the horrible murders he commmited against young women. I went with the officer right up to his cell...he looked right at me, or should I say through me. I didn't exist at all to him. Believe me, something like that stays with you.

On a more positive note, we are all well-fed here at the manor. Laura is a master chef extraordinaire. We look to her for advise and guidance in the kitchen. Ben is probably one of the most easy-going/laid-back people you will ever meet...and he loves to do the dishes. That's a big plus!!! Anne is extremely organized, and can always get things done when they need to be.

And get this!! We don't have to leave our home to find entertainment. Our neighbors across the street are quite the exhibitionists! They have a huge window into their dining room and they seem reluctant to want to have their blinds down. Hmmm....interesting. It's like a dinner theatre (They are the actors and we are the enraptured audience). We'll be eating dinner at our table and through our glass door we can see right into their dining room. Please don't think we are nosy neighbors...it honestly can't be helped!! I think they like the attention. They have to know we are watching right? We aren't discrete about it...at all.

Thanks for reading. We'll be keeping you informed about our other happenings....stay tuned.

Your friend,

Katie

House on COB Newsline

Our house here in Walnut Hills was featured on the Church of the Brethren Newsline for Oct. 21st. We are item #3, check it out!

Getting our feet wet

Hola. I thought I'd start out by introducing myself since not all of y'all know me. I'm Ben Bear, the rogue male here in the Cincinnati volunteer house. Before moving out here to Cincy I was living in Bethel, Pennsylvania, not too far from Anne and Katie. My original stomping grounds are back in Nokesville, Virginia. This is my second tour of duty with BVS having originally joined in the fall of 2007 (Unit #277 - holla!). I spent the year in Alamosa, Colorado working at a shelter and food bank. Basically my entire life up to that point had been a predominantly white, middle-class experience; my time in Alamosa was oftentimes a challenge and taught me a great deal about myself and my perceptions of the world around me.

Less than a year after leaving Colorado I find myself back in BVS, this time as part of a much-anticipated intentional community house. Personally I believe that you get more out of BVS if you take on a project that you know will challenge you rather than one that you feel completely comfortable with. Because of this ideal I am now training to be a case manager for homeless families with kids. My placement is with an organization called Interfaith Hospitality Network (http://www.ihncincinnati.org/). As with any program that works with people in transition the place is a zoo at times, which was a bit overwhelming at first. After a week and a half working there I am beginning to feel like I have a clue as to what's going on around me. I'm still training on how to do the intake process for new guests; the goal is to be flying solo on intakes in another week or two. We also have a family mentoring program that we're hoping to revamp and revitalize which I'll be helping to coordinate. There are other odds and ends tidbits I'll be working on as well, but those are two of the main objectives to tackle for now.

Working with homeless families can be a real struggle mentally, emotionally, and sometimes even physically. There is never any one reason why the moms and/or dads end up in our program; it's a combination of seemingly every aspect of their life pushing them down. They fight drug addictions, deal with sick kids with no insurance, and fight for a chance to be considered credible enough to rent a one bedroom apartment that most of us would pass over without a second glance. Child support doesn't always come through, Medicaid never quite covers it all, and the bills somehow keep piling up. Faced with the daunting task of overcoming all that seems to be going against them, it's hard to imagine being positive looking to the future.

This work becomes personal for me. True, there is a line that needs to be drawn so as not to get too involved. However, to make these people and situations completely a business-like affair isn't possible. For example, I realized today that one of our guests is one day younger than I am. It makes her plight seem so much more real to look at where she is and think, "That could have been me." She has five children between the ages of three and eight. Nobody wants to rent to a single mom with five kids who can't find a job in a depressed economy, but what is she supposed to do? Yesterday I went with another guest to help her move her belongings; she had been asked to leave due to non-compliance with the program. We pulled up in front of the building and she whisked away her three kids - all under the age of three - into a building that no person of any age should be asked to live in. As I helped her carry in her earthly possessions, walking through hallways littered with garbage and up stairwells reeking of urine, I wanted to imagine that this wasn't happening. You can't see things like that and remain indifferent - it's personal.

Back to the non-work side of things... We ventured out on Saturday to Findlay Market, Ohio's oldest public market. It was about a two mile walk with some hefty hills to traverse along the way (and a couple of wrong turns). Holy cow, was it exciting to be there! There were fresh meats of every kind around, vegetable and fruit stands, gyros, gelato, spices, plants... sensory overload to the max. It kind of reminded me of the last Disaster Relief Auction I went to, but with fewer Brethren folks. We tried to check out all the vendors before doing any shopping but decided that we needed to eat lunch - it was almost 1:00 - or we'd try to buy up the entire market. We all had gyros plus Laura and I split some feta and spinach flaky bread things (sorry, Laura; I don't remember what they're called). We split up after lunch and tried to get the items on our shopping list. Fail. We got everything on the list and then some. Seriously, would you pass up delicious avocados for a dollar each? I didn't think so. On our way back home we each were laden down with a bag of delicious goods to go with our chrysanthemum which Anne and I took turns carrying. I can only imagine how conspicuous and entertaining we must have looked trudging back up and down the hills.

Here's one last story for your entertainment. Our first Sunday here I went out for a run to see what some of the places around our neighborhood looked like. At one point on my way back I took a wrong turn and got a little mixed up with road names and directions. The next thing I knew I was running on the Columbia Parkway (which I thought, at the time, was Taft - it is most definitely NOT Taft). For the visual effect, imagine a three-foot-wide sidewalk with a retaining wall on one side and four or six lanes of traffic on the other. Whee. I got off at the next possible road and made left turns at all of the intersections that looked kind of big until I found a road that I'd run on earlier. This time I did not take the wrong turn and ended up back home... an hour and 55 minutes later. I'm guessing I ran 14 or 15 miles; the original gameplan was four. I ate ice cream and cookies that night.

I'll forego all the other stories spinning through my head right now and call it a blog. Talk to y'all again in a few weeks.

Banking in the City

I like to think of myself as someone who has stepped into a lot of banks. I've had accounts at several different banks from the time I was young, but my banks were the type that had donuts and coffee on saturday mornings, or Hershey Kisses at the counter for the taking.

Banking in my neighborhood in Cincinnati, a completely different story. When I got to the front door of the bank I noticed a green light on the outside of the door, didn't think anything of it, but upon further observation saw instructions below the light and a metal detector inside the door. Come to realize that Laura and I could not enter together. She entered first, closing the door behind her before passing through the metal detector to the next door. The second door would open when the light flashed green and she could enter the bank. I had to wait outside till she was inside and the door closed behind her and then I could start the process all over again. I felt like I deserved a Hershey Kiss for figuring out that system!

Welcome to Cincinnati!

Anne

Welcome to Walnut Hills Happenings! Laura, Katie, Ben and I wanted to document our year in Cincinnati for family, friends, and others who are interested in the new program of Brethren Volunteer Service intentional communities.



It's our first week living together and we are all getting settled into our jobs and the city. Last weekend was nice, so we got to explore some of the beautiful Eden Park we live right next to and find our way to the local Kroger groccery store. Walking home loaded down with grocceries - in canvas bags of course - is going to get us some great exercise. Now however, it's very cold and rainy here in Cincy - why can't it just be sunny and 70 degrees all the time?



As far as work goes, Laura and I are working with the Cincinnati Church of the Brethren, so we are just getting acquainted with the church. What better way to do that than to have the children's story and children's church for two age groups to plan from start to finish for this Sunday! Though I wish it were warmer, I think we have moved in at a great time of year because we also get to coordinate a trip to a corn maze - many of the kids live in the city and don't get to see fields very often if at all - and we are having a Halloween Block Party in the park next to the church.



Check back regularly for more posts, the plan is that one of the four of us will have posting duties on the blog for a week each month, so you will get a variety of perspectives on our experience.



Anne