Mission Graduates Fall 2013

The University of San Francisco’s Public Service Internship Program gave me the opportunity to become involved in a new but familiar neighborhood surrounding the same values that I have. For fall semester of 2013 I will be interning for Mission Graduates which resides in the Mission District. I’ll be able to obtain experience while seeing the development of families in the Mission District in learning about higher education possibilities for their children. I will be in charge of communications and web content development to help spread the organizations’ name through the use of media.

My name is Sandra and I am third-year business student majoring in Accounting. As a high school student I was always involved in my community helping Catechism students learn about the ways to being a good individual and making an impact on their surrounding community. It has always been in my heart to make a positive impact on someone’s life and through the PSIP program I will be able to obtain valuable work experience but continue my mission of being involved in my new community as a young adult. Luckily, PSIP matched me up with Mission Graduates who are deeply involved in making a drastic change in their community by helping its youth look towards continuing their education to have a different outcome for their lives.

Mission Graduates is a non-profit organization nested in the Mission district located at 3040 16th St. Their objective is to increase the number of K-12 students in San Francisco’s Mission District who are prepared for and complete a college education. It provides its services to schools as well as attention to a small group of 20 students to ensure their path toward college. Most of their work involves giving workshops at their partner sites which are mainly schools but are looking to expanding their work to other schools, churches, and other organizations. I was partnered with Eric Campos who is the director of the Parent Partner Program within Mission graduates. The Parent Partner Program is focused on creating parent motivation to become involved in their students education and schools.

I will be in charge of helping creating the content for the web page and translating it into Spanish. The purpose to expanding the information and detail of the web page is to inform parents as well as showcasing the work that we do within the community. We have begun creating new workshop descriptions to ensure that we cater to the needs of parents and students such as financial aid, sexuality, and kindergarten readiness. We hope to reach out to a greater group of families who are interested in learning on how to communicate with their students as well as help the students know more about the college process.

Week 1 & 2:

During my first week I was able to help in setting up for their fundraising event, Food for Thought. The fundraising event was hosted in several small restaurants within the Mission District where 10% of the meals went to Mission Graduates to continue their funding as well as to help expand their current projects. I created a slideshow and setup at the Parent Partner Program’s designated location which was at Panchitas #2 on Valencia and 16^th Street. It was great to see the amount of support from the community who bought meals and became aware of our mission.

After the event, I was given a list of the new workshop ideas that needed help developing and writing down descriptions for. This was amazing to see how these ideas have become cemented and the specifics of each program are being thought out. We are still working and drafting out these ideas. I have already translated these descriptions in Spanish but it is still under construction. The new section of the Parent Partner Program should be available on their website soon.

Week 3 & 4:

I attended one of their workshops called Sopa de Letras (or Letter Soup) at Marshall Elementary. I recorded and took pictures of the workshop. This workshop was insightful because there were various activities and explanations given throughout the meeting. Parents were asked, as a part of an activity, to help their student’s brain make connections and to ask their children open minded questions. These types of questions would help their children make connections from the real world to their education. Overall the first workshop engaged many parents and helped them understand that a strong foundation makes a strong student and reinforces their security in school.

Week 5&6

This week with Mission Graduates was interesting as all the pieces of their new website is finally coming together. All the descriptions of the different activities that the Parent Partner Program (PPP) does within Mission Graduates are being recorded and translated. Through some editing and more descriptions we should be able to have the new PPP website with their new content running up in a couple of weeks. It is really exciting to see that this new site page will not only be bilingual but will finally be making some justice for all the work that the mother leaders, organizer, and director do!

I’ve been given the task of creating their own cookbook from the mothers that attend the workshops. It a slow project but I think that this will create a sense of unity amongst mothers and hopefully build long lasting relationships. So far I have transcribed about 5 recipes and we hope to receive many more.

The last and most important part that was super exciting for the PPP Director and Organizer (Eric and Gerber, respectively) was the launch of their first Puberty and Sexuality Workshop.  This workshop is a new realm that they are trying to market to schools, churches, and small corporations as a means of being able to cater to a wide audience of parents that associate with these different organizations. Trust is one of the key foundations within this workshop that the PPP believes should exist between a parent and their children. This workshop had a great turn out at Hoover Elementary with 11 parents coming out. After conducting a small evaluation after the workshops the parents rated it as a great class that informed them of many things they did not know. We hope that the Puberty and Sexuality Workshop continues to have much success!