Upon walking into the LIFT-Cambridge office, Chris was anxious about providing help to his clients. "The idea of an adult coming to me with a problem and asking me to help them fix it sounded really scary. The first two client meetings I shadowed were focused on housing and immigration, two complicated issue areas. The Site Coordinators really knew what they were talking about with their clients. It was intimidating. The learning curve was steep, but I got the hang of things quickly."
By the close of the summer, several of Chris’s clients had made big personal achievements, including a client whose public housing application had finally been approved and another client who was accepted to a job training program and was making progress toward securing employment.
Outside of client service, Chris was able to dig deep into the Cambridge community and partner with professionals to improve resources in the office. He overhauled the Cambridge office’s client service resources on the LIFT Wiki site and worked closely with City of Cambridge Housing advocate Lynne Tyree to concentrate on creating improved housing resources for the site. He carried the office’s bicycle refurbishment program through the summer, helping publicize the program across the region and contacting several new community partners to secure bicycle donations for clients to use when affordable transportation options were not available.
Chris says, "Working to connect social service agencies to each other and connect community members to those services is something I am excited to try to do in Poughkeepsie. Working with LIFT has started me thinking about how I can connect my summer program kids and their families to local resources. For example, I know some of the kids have hardly ever been to the doctor and have never been to the dentist. It would be really great for the students I’m working with and the Vassar students who will work with them. I’m planning on tapping the Bronx office for New York state resources and ideas about how to connect with social services in Poughkeepsie. I think lots of students want to help out in their communities, but find it hard to figure out how to do it. The LIFT service model really helped to clarify how I might effectively go about doing work within my college’s community."
