Amy Skelton, Refugee Coordinator for Fort Wayne’s Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic, will host our November lunch meeting.  NCLC is located in the Community Resource Center for Refugees at 2826 South Calhoun Street, Fort Wayne, IN 46807 (Click here for map).

Amy will lead us through a conversation on managing volunteers based on her experiences coordinating volunteer lawyers. We expect she’ll have a lot to offer and can also talk to us about her work through the Americorps Vista volunteer program.

Register here to attend.

NCLC is neighborhood based and continues to add intake sites in distressed neighborhoods in response to community need. In 2009, NCLC officially opened a satellite office at the Community Resource Center for Refugees in Fort Wayne, Indiana, providing legal assistance and education to low income and immigrant families. NCLC intends to replicate all the Indianapolis based programs in Fort Wayne, striving to meet the legal demands of our low income and immigrant Fort Wayne neighbors.

Hosted by Jennifer Renner and Joe Conrad, of CANI, this month we met at ACRES Land Trust to talk about renewal through recreation and then hit the trails. Joe worked hard to pull together a special opportunity for our group to see this site and spend time together outdoors. The work paid off and in spite of a few rain drops through the canopy, we enjoyed the hike.

Following the brown bag lunch chatter, Jennifer kicked off our conversation with a detour to an ongoing theme for personal renewal in her life: community engagement.

Jennifer shared that most recently, this theme has popped up in her reading – right now she’s reading Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy: the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. She read from a passage about choosing to interact with people in our daily lives by slowing down and making a conscious effort to engage and spoke about how this intentional behavior has been a personal source of renewal.

From there, the conversation flowed into how technology, namely Facebook can be seen as contributing to isolation.

Joe brought the conversation back to our individual needs for personal time to rebuild or rejuvenate in order to be able to engage in our community.

Joe noted, for example, that while he knew he would enjoy hiking with our group, the experience would not be the same as being in the woods alone. He went on to suggest that being alone in natural settings restores a lost perspective and focus.

At this point, ACRES executive director, Jason Kissel launched a discussion of the organization’s mission and goals. Throughout our meeting, Jason talked about nature as a non-built environment and what that means.

We talked about the feeling of breathless awe we all got as our cars rounded the corner of Coldwater onto the tree-lined Chapman, in its golden autumnal leaf coverage.

As we mulled over how this plays out in our daily lives, he pointed out that when we’re walking in a city, in a store, or through our neighborhoods we’re guided along predetermined paths. Human eye movements and our behavior are studied and design based on these. We are given limited choices for how to navigate built environments.

Essentially, we talked about how we interact with the natural environment differently than built environments, which is where we spend most of our time.

The biggest difference stemming from the nature of nature is the freedom to choose behavior – from spending hours examining life under a pile of leaves to using that time veer off -trail, to simply stopping, observing and noting simple changes in a world untouched by human engineering. We got at understanding why being in the woods affects so many of us deeply.

We learned about the nearly 4600 acres owned by the land trust and saw  images of the properties, here in our own backyards. We concluded with hiking a few trails guided by Jason who pointed out things like the differences in Cedar Creek, the nature of the deep ravines we stood upon in the Canyon and generally informed us of the intricacies of this habitat.

We left feeling good. Better than before we arrived.

Friday, October 23, 2009
12 – 2pm
ACRES Land Trust
1802 Chapman Rd. – Huntertown, IN  46748

As usual BYO-Brown Bag Lunch, this month’s coordinators at CANI will provide dessert!

REGISTER HERE

Join us as we retreat to nature in a follow-up to our February NextGen
Digest about Work/Life Balance.

CANI Development Supervisor Jennie Renner and CANI Executive Director Joe Conrad will lead the discussion about the importance of Recreation in your life.

Then ACRES Executive Director Jason Kissell will talk about ACRES mission and history and take us on a hike.

Cross your fingers for good weather! See you on the trail!

Katelyn Jacquay Daniel hosted our September meeting of NextGen Digest at the The Greater Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce. Katelyn was asked to present on her moving from an intern to a full time staff member over the last year. Inspired by a work of nonfiction given to her by former English teacher upon her High School graduation, Katelyn led us through a discussion of, The Big Moo.

Our conversation moved in many directions following Katelyn’s highlights from The Big Moo, edited by Seth Godin with 33 of the world’s remarkable business leaders contributing. The overriding idea behind the book is summed in the tag line, “Stop Trying to Be Perfect and Start Being Remarkable.”

Some of the lessons learned included time management and how easily we can get caught up responding to emergency situations without spending time strategizing for our missions. This thought resonated with the group and we talked about the balance of answering to the demands of email and little “fires” versus creative thinking, planning and essential networking time.

With chapters like, “How to be a Failure” and “Are you always running out of time?,” The Big Moo aims to keep readers entertained while sparking deep thinking about routine, habits and what we take for granted in our work lives.

Following our conversation, a small group of professionals carried on networking and sharing ideas, while the rest of us toured the Chamber. The Greater Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce is housed in a beautiful facility, rich in history and our tour guide provided much to think about the evolution of the concept of the Chamber in our community as relates to Women’s history, in particular.

We’re meeting at the Greater Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce in September!

Next Meeting:  September 18 from 12:30 – 2 at the Greater Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce, 826 Ewing Street.

Katelyn Jacquay Daniel will host our conversation on creating opportunities by building a reputation for good results: or how she went from being an intern to landing a full time job with the Chamber.

We’re certain everyone has a different definition of personal success and a success story to share!

Frustrated by where you’re at professionally right now? Get feedback on how to create change and provide support for others. Join us!

*A behind the scenes tour of the Chamber concludes the meeting

Would you like to RSVP? Email the nrc@acpl.info or Fan the Paul Clarke Nonprofit Resource Center on Facebook to RSVP there.

We were a large group for our August meeting – our first at Turnstone Center for the Disabled. We welcomed new folks to the table, including an out-of-town visitor brought by a committed member.  Jen Neher hosted and provided resources and a plate Cookie Cottage cookies that we were happy to devour.

Jen led us through a discussion on the Power of Networking, using an online resource that she tweaked based on her experiences and training. We were all delighted to learn that Jen loves development, as she explained it, owing to the relationships she has built.

We talked about Networking as a life skill and how to do it ethically, with integrity, about getting out of our comfort zones, role modeling and more. Our conversation flowed into privacy concerns on social networks and we all had something to say about balance.

Jen wrapped up our meeting with a full facility tour of Turnstone where we saw the myriad services made available to folks with physical disabilities.

We chatted briefly about some upcoming opportunities for NeXtGeners, including a fall and/or spring retreat with a mentor/s. We’re still pulling details together – we’ll post to the blog as we it comes together.

Many thanks to Jennifer for hosting a lively conversation and meeting!

We’re looking forward to our August meeting – our first visit at Turnstone Center for the Disabled! Jennifer Neher, Director of Development & Marketing for Turnstone will host our conversation this month.

Jen’s preparing now to start a conversation on her experience in nonprofit work. We’re likely talking about $.

Join us!

Where: Turnstone Center for the Disabled

(Get Google map directions to Turnstone)

When: Friday, August 21 from 12:30-2:00

Who: Young or New Nonprofit Professionals

What: An informal monthly gathering

Why: Because you need a support a network

Today we met at the Rialto to discuss Social Media and Web 2.0 Tools for nonprofits with Andrew Hoffman.

To plot the conversation, Andrew used Mindmeister, a free online mindmapping tool that could be used by nonprofits for collaborative projects, event planning and more.

Join the discussion here: http://www.mindmeister.com/24623802/web-2-0-social-media

On Friday, July 17, we’re joining Andrew Hoffman, Executive Director of Neighborlink Fort Wayne at the Rialto Theater, home of the Reclamation Project at 2614 South Calhoun Street, Fort Wayne, IN 46807.

Andrew will lead us through a conversation on 2.0 technology for nonprofits, so bring your questions and own experience.

We’re also hoping to offer an update on YNPN chapter status and web presence. Feel free to bring your own lunch and visitors are welcome.

REGISTER HERE

On June 19 we met at the YWCA and discussed Working with Difficult People – which is a misnomer. In fact, we talked about working with clients, or persons served who are in crisis.

With conversation facilitation by Hilary Andersen, a Family Outreach Coordinator for the YW, we covered concerns and issues with working with people in crisis. Hilary was able to provide a unique perspective by contributing her training with Ruby Payne’s Bridges Out of Poverty, which some members of the group had heard of before.

Bridges Out of Poverty takes the concepts of hidden rules of economic class and uses them to educate social workers, employers and community organizations about hte unique and sometimes hidden obstacles that individuals from poverty face.

If you are interested in the Bridges Out of Poverty training the Indiana Nonprofit Resource Network offers it regularly. See their training calendar here (enter the term “poverty” to narrow the schedule).

The conversation ran the gamut. We talked about how stretched we feel to meet the needs of our persons served when they are in difficult situations. We were able to offer a variety of perspectives, based on different experiences, agreeing that when in crisis, people are focused on meeting their basic needs. We also talked about Maslow’s Hierarchy, especially in relation physiological needs and how that theory is reflected in social work.

It was another stimulating conversation that reminded us the value of making time for monthly networking.