September Week 2: Episode 1

I can't remember what I did before Wednesday. I remember the sad Tuesday afternoon departure of our fearless leader, Jeff Devereux, who was in the previous class of interns but stayed on for an extra month and quickly became a mentor and friend for all of us new Cape-terns. Other than that, it's hard for me to recall anything else. The tail end of the week brought with it enough tasks, adventures and special moments to last me a month. I will try to bring my readers into some of those moments, but it may take more than one post. And unfortunately (at least for you all), I'm not sure things will be slowing down anytime in the next two weeks. If you all promise to be patient, I promise to do my best to keep up.

Jeff Dev's Departure Dinner Celebration with interns, former interns, and friends

What a Wednesday:
I mentioned in my last post that we are revamping an after-school soccer league called Community League, and said that this league may be the forum into which I can best develop my masculinity discussions into GRS and Football for Hope programming. The Community League is a well-funded project in which 6 person teams play in league games and then participate in GRS life skills programs when their team is not on the field (the latter of which is where I should be able to pilot the Man Box). There are close to 700 participants, with each day of the week dedicated to a different age group. Members of the community also volunteer to referee the games. Despite the massive amount of potential that this Community League has, however, it has previously been a very informal project run by just a couple people and the money dedicated to the program often is only spent on trophies, soccer balls, etc at the termination of the grant cycle just to use it. So, with the guidance and motivation of Jeff Dev, I have taken the Community League project on as my baby, and Wednesday was a complete "crunch time" day.

Having drawn up a budget for the remaining grant funds with Jeff Dev and having met with Poppy (a site staff member who currently runs Community League) to outline the league's schedule from next week until the grant's end in February, I had a great discussion with Vuyo (our site's program coordinator) to create job descriptions for four new Community League positions early Wednesday morning. We decided to have four league coordinators under Poppy, each of whom will be in charge of a separate age group and have one of the following responsibilities: Matches and Results Coordinator, Life Skills Coordinator, and Two Referee Coordinators. I left feeling ready to take on the world, with my efforts finally looking like they were going to materialize into something new and exciting.

My excitement only increased after I met with Bukeka (or Bukie for short), a GRS coach, for my first 1on1 "Eric and Anna's Employability and Computer Restaurant" session immediately following the discussion with Vuyo. It was so great to see how excited and appreciative Bukie was to  have the chance to set up her own email, but more so to simply talk with someone about the future. We connected so well, and so many of her views about facilitating, teaching, and even general thoughts about the job searching process aligned with mine. The smile I wore after leaving Vuyo's office grew another few centimeters...

Our 1on1 came to an abrupt end when I had to drive Bukie and a bunch of the other female coaches to a school for Skillz Street, GRS's female specific program. Both the departing and returning car rides were full of laughter (often at my expense), and the session in school was my favorite practice to watch. Both coaches and participants were so fired up all session, and it was amazing to see how the students took charge of the session and just let loose. Cindy, they were most definitely on your wavelength

After Skillz Street and the long trek back to Kloof in the Avanza, I still didn't find a time to breathe. I had to ran up the hill to look over into Camps Bay (remember that name, because you will see it again) to get my blood pumping, then there was the issue of dinner before I had to sit down at our kitchen table to actually write up the job descriptions that Vuyo and I had outlined earlier that morning. Jordin Sparks and Kelly Clarkson music took me all the way to 11pm, when I had four polished job descriptions and an additional goals for Poppy as director. I left the house at 8 in the morning and didn't stop until 11 - my kind of a day :) May there be many more like it!