Last Wednesday's Meeting

Last Wednesday, we had a short, but interesting meeting. We first discussed everybody's experiences at their respective sites. Everybody had something good to say, but I was especially intrigued by Rita Tran's week at the Underground Cafe (UC) and Emily Chamberlain's week at the Family Treatment Court.
Rita spoke about how difficult it was for the children now that the upstairs space is not quite finished and the downstairs space is slightly restrictive. Even worse, the children are not happy about the new regulations that have been imposed upon the program since they received funding from the Safe Schools Advantage After School Program fund. In short, it's too regimented. The kids just want to dance or play basketball, but now they have to do certain programs. When Haley started the UC a few years ago, it was meant to be a place where the students decided what they wanted to do. Now, they are growing weary as they see control shift slowly out of their hands. Also, the UC is supposed to be open from 6-8 PM on Thursdays, but now they can't find enough staff to keep it open that late.
Emily mentioned how three women got in trouble for sneaking out of Johnson Park Center (JPC), a rehabilitory residence area with a strict no-drug policy, to score some drugs. Needless to say, these three women were kicked out of JPC. She also sat next to a judge during a hearing at the Family Court. The case involved a woman who was trying to maintain custody of her child after it became known that she beat this child. Apparently, this women had lost custody of her other children years earlier for similar reasons. When asked by the judge how long she would continue having children, even though she treated them so poorly, she replied "I'll continue having children until you let me keep one of them."
After this, Amy James spoke about a potential service trip with Amherst College. She had recently an e-mail from the Bonner Director at Amherst who expressed interest in collaborating with us on some sort of service activity. Also, the Bonner program at Hobart Williams and Smith has expressed interest in collaborating with us as well, so we thought that it would be a good idea if Amherst and HWS met us halfway in Utica (we're lazy) sometime in either April or May. However, this is extremely tentative as we haven't even discussed location or dates with either college yet.
Finally, I showed everybody this blog. Everybody seemed to like it and I hope that they all become active bloggers.