The Realities of Egleston YMCA

It has been pretty busy at the Y this summer; camp for the child care program, the teen center slowly disintegrating, and the computer lab with all its wonderful programing happening.

This summer I facilitated two programs that were pretty successful. We had a math club and a creative writing club and the kids seemed to love it! This is one positive thing that came out of the summer. Also, for the teen center, I hired a nice man to facilitate a media literacy workshop called Media Minds. Non of the teens from the teen center became involved, which was very disappointing. But, this sort of thing is very new to Egleston, so it might take a couple of years to get people used to workshops like Media Minds. What ended up happening was that we used teens that were working for the Y during the Summer to participate in the media literacy workshop and a few enjoyed it a lot.

Your probably wondering what I meant by the Realities of Egleston YMCA, well we got broken into and a lot of nice things got stolen from the computer lab! ) ; One monitor, all the speakers, and a digital camera, among others things in the building were stolen! My supervisor Matt Crichton says that these are the realities of this place and you work with what you got. What do you think? Do you just work with what you have or do you fight and complain until things get right and you get what you want and in most cases what you need?

Comment from Kevin Palmer on August 20, 2007 - 11:48am

I'd say the whole reason VISTAs are in non-profits are to make organizations/communities operate better (big caps: CAPACITY BUILDING). As VISTA's I don't think that kind of resignation is going to serve your purpose, your organization or the community you're serving any good. Grab on to that one piece you're responsible for and make it the best you can come hill or high water. That's my 2 cents after being a VISTA for 14 months.

Comment from Gabriel Fishman on August 20, 2007 - 3:58pm

If you need to replace any equipment maybe we can help you. Castle Square isn't too far - we don't have anything new but if you need old monitors and stuff...

Comment from Leena Silverman on August 20, 2007 - 5:52pm

Leena Silverman

CTC VISTA/ AmeriCorps

CyberY Youth and Teen Media Developer

Yeah! Sure, that would be great!