Week 2 at Chandler

Wow so I thought my first week at Chandler was a busy one full of new surprises, but man was I wrong week 2 was just a crazy and busy as the first one, but all in the most positive, inspiring, and motivating ways. At the beginning of the week I sat down with my Sara my supervisor to see what she what plans she had for me for the week. The first task was to go through and do an inventory of the equipment for a teen leadership and diversity camp the City of Chandler hosts every year called Unitown. Unitown is a diversity and leadership development camp for high school students ages 14-18. It is a low-cost residential camp program that brings young people from all over the City together to address issues that affect Chandler teens on a daily basis, such as racism, violence in our community, cliques and more. Unitown is a challenging environment, yet it is also a fun social experience that can enhance the participants’ college applications. Since I have many years of experience with these camps Sara asked me if I could also on top of the other duties she gave me for the summer, organized and put together the Chandler Unitown Camp this year. I gladly accepted and did the inventory of all of our supplies. This was a dirty task but some on had to do it and since the "intern" is the intern the job was already assigned to me even before I was asked to.
I spent my Tuesday and Wednesday inputting the inventory information on an excel spreadsheet, Sara also had me look over and set up the templates for all of her coordinators for the upcoming 2009-10 fiscal year. This was great exposure for me because I got to see how Chandler manages their budget, how they track their revenue, consolidate information and putting that information in their reports. Since I plan on being in the power position a huge part of my job is going to make sure the budgets are balanced and everything matches and lines up.
Thursday of week two I got asked to spend the day at Chandler's Camp Challenge;
Camp Challenge 2009 is a summer day camp, organized by the City of Chandler
Therapeutic Recreation program and designed for children and teens, ages 5-21 with
developmental disabilities. Camp Challenge activities include arts & crafts, sports &
games, swimming, special guests, music, talent show, cooking and more. I got the pleasure of working with the "Cool Kids" camp which is the camp for the 6-9 year old. I can tell you this that after spending the day at Camp Challenge I have a whole new respect for all those wonderful staff that work and have a passion with this population. This was and is not easy work and patience is key for this line of work. We had about 12 kids we were looking over and boy did we have our hands full. But I can tell you this, this was the most uplifting and inspiring day I have had in a very long time. The kids at this camp have such beautiful souls and you can see their appreciation and love for the staff that look over them. I will admit that I have anxiety when it comes to the special needs community, I haven't always been comfortable being around that population. But after spending the day there was very therapeutic for me. That day we took the entire camp to one of the city public pools, and while at the pool I was paired with two of the younger kids. Even though my hands were completely full monitoring them I had the greatest time. My little guy Mikey kept thinking he was Michael Phelps and kept trying to jump off the diving board and swimming in the deep end, Mikey is only 5. By the end of that day I was spent, I cannot thank those kids at the camp enough for showing me I have nothing to be nervous about with that population and how rewarding it is to work with that group. Camp Challenge and the staff that run that program is a need program that is inclusive to all groups of people. I plan on spending some more time at the camp to get to know the kids better. This was a great week