Okay so, it's been a while, I know

Dear folks--

I finally feel like I've escaped from the February doldrums. Have you? The past two days have been gorgeous and great for biking. I'm working remotely today at Voluto Coffee House in Garfield with the sun on my back. Earlier today I attended a press conference at Big Brothers Big Sisters for the unveiling of a new program top help children of incarcerated parents, inspired by Philadelphia's first African-American mayor, the Reverend Dr. W. Wilson Goode. He talked about the widespread negative effects the prison system has on children in this country and how programs like Big Brothers Big Sisters can create positive change for those children.

Last night I watched Prison Town, USA a PBS documentary about Susanville, CA, a town with a huge prison system creating devastating effects on a small-town's community and economy. It makes me angry that the U.S. imprisons way more people than all the European countries combined. And we profit off of a system that destroys people's lives. There has got to be a better way...

I'm thankful to be in a position to live within my means so I don't have to rely on an underground economy to survive, and I'm thankful that Pittsburgh has more job opportunities than just corrections. There are so many systems that need work in our community and so many ways that passionate people can get involved. There are certainly barriers to sustainable and affirming employment and I wonder what contributions I can make to removing those barriers. My work as an ITL fellow has a lot to do with this. In fact, I just go the go-ahead to put my project plan into action.

My mission is as follows:

Through community education, internship program development, networking, activism, various media communications, and a “whole self”-focused workplace initiative, I will serve the mission of the RIC, the ITL as well as my own personal mission to enact change through storytelling.

My main focus areas are: media networks and development, the Regional Internship Center's internship network, and my own community presence. One hang up on the way to completing the Project Plan was figuring out just how to measure what it is I'm doing. Impossible to track progress without some kind of number plugging/crunching. But it was hard to set numbers and say, okay I'm going to do this many of these and that many of those--because, you know, what if I get 29 instead of 30?! I want my goals to be challenging but not impossible. It seems though, that so much about what Jen and Bobby and Mad talk about is how to envision the completed project and plan out the steps necessary to make that happen.

And it starts with writing here consistently!

Peace,
Rayden