Amanda Lasik

Busy Day

Back from a three-day weekend and already my Hacer (To Do) list has grown quite large. Included on the list is planning and preparation for our end of the trimester party & Garage Sale. I'm also planning for our final 3 driving and computer classes-including testing to see what they've learned!!! I need to organize our grant folder and put together curriculum guides for both our driving and computer classes.

We're also working on translating our website (it's a huge ordeal with all of the different pages). We've had it set-up to display both English & Spanish for awhile, but it's time consuming to do a thorough job translating pages. Everyone translates and interprets things a little bit differently. Anyway, we have managed to put a lot of new personal stories on the website in both English & Spanish. To view our website go to www.lacasahogar.org.

Well, gotta go and brush up on my computer vocabulary to teach PowerPoint in Spanish.

Update

Today I took two of my driving students to the DMV to take their tests. They passed, & I was so excited for them! We were reviewing on the way there, & I don't think I was displaying my best driving skills because I was also trying to explain certain rules and regulations in Spanish. The DMV in Yakima, WA is really a sight to see. It gives you a real sampling of what the population in this county is like.

This week has been busy as usual. We had a promotional event on Tuesday, and I finished applications for VISTA and Readycorps positions for our new homeless drop-in center. The homeless drop-in center is materializing a lot faster than I thought it would. Right now it is still just a run-down builiding across the street, but we are organizing volunteers and gathering resources to fix-it up. We are partnering with the Coalition for the Homeless and Homeless Network to make the drop-in center available. Once opened, La Casa Hogar's emergency services will be moved across the street, and clients will have the option to spend as much time there as they need. Job training, referrals, and transitional housing will also be offered.

I have also been trying to coordinate GED, Cooking, and Spanish classes. The GED teacher will be leaving soon, and the new teacher wants to change the schedule. The Cooking teacher also wants to change class times, and no one seems available to take a Spanish classes at the same time. To make things more complicated, our waiting list in the database is painfully disorganized. It feels like we have a million and half classes going on all the time, and this place is badly in need of more people that are capable of organizing things.

Pics

A picture of me and one of my favorite students at our Annual Dinner Fundraiser.

Some of my favorites from the Children's Learning Center.

¡Las mujeres de Casa Hogar!

We constantly have new babies at La Casa Hogar. The women are always asking me when I am having children (particulary when we are celebrating Mother's Day.) I always tell them that I am not going to have children & they laugh!

The wonderful staff of La Casa Hogar!!!

Mother's Day

Today we celebrated Mother's Day at La Casa. Basically, we take advantage of any opportunity to have a fiesta. We eat lots of food and generally have a good time. Although today, out of all the women in the room it was only me and a 85 year-old nun that had no children of our own. These women are constantly asking me when I'm going to get married or have children & they think it is so funny that I always say never.

Other than the little fiesta, there is not much to report. I'm working on the same newsletters, grants, classes, etc.

Crisis Management

When I signed up for this job, I didn't know that I would be gaining so much experience in Social Work. I have always had great appreciation for social workers, but now I understand a little bit more about what their jobs are like. We have been slammed with emergency services this week-everything from hysterical, pregnant women to people that just want to talk. We have gone way overbudget for the first quarter of the year in direct aid, and it is difficult to see how few resources are available for people in the Yakima Valley. My primary responsibilities do not relate to this aspect of our program, but occassionally I end up helping people that come in or call with an emergency situation. Also, we receive additional clients because of our reputation for being able to serve mono-lingual Spanish speakers.

This has been a very busy week at La Casa Hogar, and I'm really glad that it's Friday. We have too many activities and projects going on, and not enough staff to follow-through with everything. We were going to have a garage sale to raise money for women and families that will be taking a trip to Holden Village (a beautiful retreat in the Cascade Mountains), but we had to cancel it because we were lacking the time to put it all together. All of these activities have created tension in our staff meetings because no one wants to have another thing to do.

Anyway, I'm just plugging along and getting what I can done. I did manage to get the Weyerhauser Children's Learning Center grant out the door this week, and the Newsletters will be mailed out today. I also found a new GED teacher to continue the class for the summer and managed to organize the women's nutrition class so that it could begin this week. Next on my list is organizing our June 10th party so that we can recognize all volunteers and include students from all of our classes. I also need to get some grants out the door and work on further developing curriculum for my driving class.

Finally!

Well, I finally figured out how to access my weblog again. I can't believe how long it took me to figure it out, but thank you Saul for your patience with my lack of technical expertise. I'm going to have to write a lot of weblogs to make up for my lack of entries.

Anyway, I've been busy as usual. My newest endeavor has been teaching a driving class. I am team-teaching with one of the women here, and we are using interactive software and the Department of Licensing book to teach women the skills they need to obtain their learners permit. We are teaching this class in Spanish, so I have learned a whole new set of vocabulary words that relate to driving. The women are excited about the Drivers Edge computer software because it simulates actual driving situations. I see the class as killing two birds with one stone because in addition to learning driving skills, many of these women are using the computer for the first time. Plus, this new program has sparked a new interest in our students and they are actually coming in to use open lab hours! We tracked more lab hours in the last two weeks of April than the previous 3 months combined!

I also just completed a newsletter that serves as an Annual Report for La Casa Hogar. It sums up the major accomplishments of the year and thanks our donors for their support. I'm also working on a Children's Learning Center grant from Weyerhauser and a Microsoft Unlimited Potential Grant for general funds. I have also been coordinating new volunteers. We have a hard time retaining volunteers, and we are working to get consistent volunteers in the ESL classes, clothing bank, and for our emergency services.

Well, that's the update. I will write again soon!