- Face fears and jump in
It was not really that I had a choice, I just happened to be thrown into all those things. Standing in a hallway of an unknown senior building trying to advertise an activity to seniors whose primary language isn’t English cannot only be awkward, it is awkward! But now that I look back I regret none of those moments. It was not only that I learned to face my fears, but especially in order to make something happen, you have to just do it.
- Analyze first and judge later
This is a mistake I have seen myself doing very often and it has been hard for me to overcome this immediate judging and be more patient. When I started last year in October after just finishing my engineering undergraduate degree, I have never had the experience of working in a small organization as LBFE, who transitioned from paper to digital databases not too long ago. As being used to technology, it took me time to understand that what is easy for me doesn’t mean it is easy for everybody else.
- Small things can have a big impact
Brenda and Daniela, Lower Mills City Site, Fall 2015
During my time I have done a lot of small things, when I ran three City Sites a week, met with elders in the city or teaching a computer class. However, when you combine all of them, that is when you see that I was able to bring a smile on a face of so many people who attended one of the 102 City Sites, 16 Special and Holiday events or my 18 Hour Computer class.
- Get a first hand account of other cultures
It is not only that I learned a lot about the American culture. Little Brothers gave me the chance to get into and visit various buildings being the home of different cultures. I learned a lot about Jewish holidays including Rosh Hashanah and Passover while visiting them on the day of, had the chance to try traditional Chinese Zongzi dumplings as part of the Dragon Boat Festival during a City Site and of course celebrated Thanksgiving, and the 4th of July watching Boston’s firework show.
- Getting another perspective on technology
It was not only, when we had sent postcards and called tons of elders to invite them to our annual holiday events, but also when I was teaching a computer class for seniors, that I got to know about all the challenges seniors have to deal with when facing technology. What surprised me the most, was how they were overwhelmed by the amount of buttons and graphics on websites, while I never realized it has always been clear to me where I am supposed to click.
- You cannot please everybody
I never had a problem with saying out loud what I think, but I still wanted to make everybody happy, wanted everybody to like my piece of cake. After leading so many city sites and trying to put up a program everybody likes, I finally realized, how true this is and that the time is not worth it. Ruben and my first intention was to introduce City Site game prizes to encourage participation. It took not long until we noticed people were being loud for not winning or winning the “wrong” prize. That was when we decided to stop in order to return to a calm and welcoming atmosphere.
- Design for the margins
Never in my life have I been confronted with so many minorities, whether because of their origin, color, medical condition or other factors. While I learnt I cannot please all of them, it is even more important to consider those margins in the process. I translated bingo numbers to Spanish and printed out a huge, easy to read bingo card during a City Site and offered various difficulty levels to the senior participants of my computer class. It is not about pleasing everybody, but about emphasizing equity and giving everybody a chance to be part of the project.
- Making decisions
At one of our City Sites, we had the chance to offer Donuts as a special treat to our attendees. For a long period during my time here, I have been afraid of changing this up as I knew the people enjoyed this consistency, but I also wanted to offer them a more healthy and nourishing alternative. I finally took the chance to change this up and the attendees actually really enjoyed the watermelon we had that day. This is just one example on where I look back and wish I would have made this decision earlier or as a German philosopher once said “The price of inaction is far higher than the cost of making a mistake.”
- You have to change in order to grow
In 2015, LBFE started new programs with the goal of serving and reaching more elders in Boston. Being directly involved and part of this change, has given me a great example of how necessary it is to explore new ways in order to improve and maximize the outcome especially when it seems like the capacities are reached. This has never been clearer to me before and inspired me throughout the whole year to continue question my work and seek for alternative ways.
- Seeking improvement not perfection
This goes hand in hand with the Number 8 and 9. Before I started to teach my computer class, I had no teaching experience. There was simply no way I could have done it all right from the first class, but I sat down after each lesson and tried to do small steps to become a better teacher and give everybody the chance to learn something new. I was nervous for my first class to start, but I also knew that figuring out those small steps was the only way I could do a good job at it.
Daniela spent a year with LBFE in Boston as part of a year of service with World Horizon.