Well hello there! Is it really February 15th already? It would appear so! Well, I have had a couple of very busy weeks, which is the reason for the lack of blogs. Last week we had a 3-day training at work that I pretty much planned soup to nuts. It was a lot of work with many prep sessions, agenda revisions, and contingency plans. The latter because, as you may have heard, New York City was walloped with a massive snowstorm on Wednesday, the exact day that our training was scheduled to start with sales folks arriving from the far-flung reaches of Vegas, Chicago, and Connecticut.
We were supposed to kick off at noon on Wednesday and, miraculously, all but one of our sales reps - ironically, the one from Connecticut - arrived by 2pm. Unfortunately, our presenters did not fair so well and we were only able to have one session on Wednesday. With almost everyone else working from home, our team managed to have 12 people in the office for 2.5 hours of training on Wednesday. We are so hardcore.
The rest of the week was just busy and included 2 nights of free drinks with the team. I'm still trying to recover from the over-eating and pursuant sense of fat-ness, but that's ok.
And now, Taylor and I are seated squarely on our couch watching reruns of scrubs becasue, blessedly, we have the day off today! Plenty of time to recouperaet from the long week :)
So that pretty much covers the Snow and Work portions of this title. The last is travels, which was just a reminder to myself to update you all in blogland about our travel schedule.
This will be a really short week because Taylor and I have taken off Friday to go to Buffalo and watch Taylor's sister's last conference swim meet before she graduates college.
Two weeks later, we aren't the ones doing the travelling, but I think it warrants mentioning nonetheless. When Taylor was in Indonesia, he encouraged one of the teachers at his school to apply for a sort of reverse Fulbright to the United States. She applied and actually won the scholarship and has been studying new Cincinnati at Western Kentucky University since January. This is big because she had never even been off the Indonesian Island she was born on until this year.
We really wanted to see her while she's in the U.S. but instead of buying two tickets to visit her in Cincinnati (sorry, Lepolts), we decided she probably wants to see New York anyway, so we would just buy her a ticket to come to New York City. So on March 6, Taylor's friend Tutik is coming to stay with us and see New York City for the first time. She is really, really excited to come, it's really cute!
A couple of weeks later, Taylor is going on a business trip to Toronto, so I'll have to fend for myself. I think I can handle it though! :) And then hopefully one weekend in March or April, we're going to go visit my grandparents near Orlando, Florida. The dates depend on on when we can get cheap tickets, so fingers crossed!
Alright, sorry this is a really boring blog, my apologies!
Monday, February 15, 2010
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
A Belated Volunteering Story...
Last Monday, Taylor and I had a really interesting volunteering experience that I've been meaning to write about. We volunteered for the Department of Homeless Services’ (DHS) annual street survey, called the HOPE Street Survey, on January 25, 2010, from 10:30 PM – 4:00 AM. The HOPE survey is basically a point-in-time estimate of the unsheltered homeless population in New York City.
The way it works is, 3,000 New Yorkers (and folks from outside New York, I know some kids came from Princeton) show up at 10:30pm on the night of the survey at one of several "hub" around the city. We went through about 45 minutes of training for the night. The basic setup is that they divide New York City into thousands of small areas and then assign 4-5 volunteers to survey 1-2 areas each. Each group has to walk every sidewalk in their assigned several-block area, including both sides of every street and any parks or other public areas. We are given a short survey which basically is intended to find out if the person is homeless, and we have to ask that survey of EVERY person we see. That includes someone in a North Face jacket walking a poodle, a man getting out of a Mercedes after a long night at the office, and of course any actual homeless folks. The reason we have to talk to everyone is that they want to eliminate any volunteer bias about who may or may not be homeless.
We were actually assigned to a large group (9 people) and went up to the West Harlem area around 125th Street. Basically we walked the street in that area and didn't see a soul. Then we were also assigned to the 125th Street subway stops of the 1 and the A,B,C,D trains, which was really interesting. We interviewed some homeless people as well as some obviously NOT homeless people.
I actually had the most robust experience of our group when I talked to a really nice homeless man on the subway. He was really sweet and answered all of my questions. At the end of our conversation, I asked him if he would like to receive shelter for the night. It wasn't a very cold night, so we didn't expect many people to accept the offer. He was funny, his answer was “No, thanks, I have some things I have to finish up,” which was clearly not true since he was just standing on the subway platform with two suitcases not going anywhere. But he was very nice and, at least for that night, not too cold.
The other interesting thing about the survey is that they actually place decoys around the city to ensure that the teams of volunteers do in fact talk to everyone they see. They plant decoy homeless individuals on some of the streets, parks, and subways that volunteers will survey. The researchers who analyze the survey then adjust its total estimate of the homeless in New York based on the percentage missed. New York is the only U.S. city that ensures the accuracy of its count through this technique. Our area actually had two decoys and I’m proud to say we found them both!
HOPE 2009 found the number of individuals living on New York City streets down by 47 percent since 2005, and a 30 percent decline from the 2008 survey. We’re still awaiting the results of 2010, but it was really fun either way!
The way it works is, 3,000 New Yorkers (and folks from outside New York, I know some kids came from Princeton) show up at 10:30pm on the night of the survey at one of several "hub" around the city. We went through about 45 minutes of training for the night. The basic setup is that they divide New York City into thousands of small areas and then assign 4-5 volunteers to survey 1-2 areas each. Each group has to walk every sidewalk in their assigned several-block area, including both sides of every street and any parks or other public areas. We are given a short survey which basically is intended to find out if the person is homeless, and we have to ask that survey of EVERY person we see. That includes someone in a North Face jacket walking a poodle, a man getting out of a Mercedes after a long night at the office, and of course any actual homeless folks. The reason we have to talk to everyone is that they want to eliminate any volunteer bias about who may or may not be homeless.
We were actually assigned to a large group (9 people) and went up to the West Harlem area around 125th Street. Basically we walked the street in that area and didn't see a soul. Then we were also assigned to the 125th Street subway stops of the 1 and the A,B,C,D trains, which was really interesting. We interviewed some homeless people as well as some obviously NOT homeless people.
I actually had the most robust experience of our group when I talked to a really nice homeless man on the subway. He was really sweet and answered all of my questions. At the end of our conversation, I asked him if he would like to receive shelter for the night. It wasn't a very cold night, so we didn't expect many people to accept the offer. He was funny, his answer was “No, thanks, I have some things I have to finish up,” which was clearly not true since he was just standing on the subway platform with two suitcases not going anywhere. But he was very nice and, at least for that night, not too cold.
The other interesting thing about the survey is that they actually place decoys around the city to ensure that the teams of volunteers do in fact talk to everyone they see. They plant decoy homeless individuals on some of the streets, parks, and subways that volunteers will survey. The researchers who analyze the survey then adjust its total estimate of the homeless in New York based on the percentage missed. New York is the only U.S. city that ensures the accuracy of its count through this technique. Our area actually had two decoys and I’m proud to say we found them both!
HOPE 2009 found the number of individuals living on New York City streets down by 47 percent since 2005, and a 30 percent decline from the 2008 survey. We’re still awaiting the results of 2010, but it was really fun either way!
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