Grant Grigorian's Blog » volunteering

Back to the neighborhood

Grant Grigorian — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 04:41:28 +0000

For the last few months, I’ve been so busy with work that I kind of disengaged with the neighborhood issues, and it felt great to participate in the “officer’s meeting” of my neighborhood association tonight.

I will be working on a project to re-engage with the neighborhood on a grassroots level, by having each block captain go door to door to reintroduce themselves and gather information about residents (names, emails, etc). I have the neighborhood resident listing as it’s currently recorded, and I’d liket to create a worksheet for each block captain to fill in/confirm/correct the information for each address.

Overall, it’s really rewarding to be part of neighborhood discussions. To know what is being planned by developers, the city, what the issues are, and most importantly who the people are who live here.

Voices of Refugees: volunteering at an event at DU

Grant Grigorian — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 21:41:42 +0000

This week I went to help with the set up and break down of an interesting event at DU, sponsored by the African Community Center. The even was Voices of Refugees: Stories of Fear, Courage and Triumph – five refugees got up on stage and told their stories to a packed auditorium.

Iraq – Haiffaa Ali, one of the first Iraqis to resettle in Denver, fled Baghdad after her father was murdered by militiamen in his home. She talked about being absolutely devasted when she found out that she had been granted entry to the US, the one country she hated for ruining her country – and about the amazing transformation of her view of America and its people once she got here.

Sudan - Lado Jurkin, a “Lost Boys,” will speak about his extraordinary experiences while walking from Sudan to Ethiopia and then to Kenya.

Somalia – Jamal Ali, arrived in the U.S. severely malnourished and on the verge of death. Since then he has thrived to become a leader in the community, helping other refugees start new lives in Denver.

Burma (Myanmar) – Aung Kyaw Toe, escaped Rangoon after the bloody 1988 protests and will speak of the current situation in his homeland.

Great job ACC – keep up the good work!

Failure to commit to volunteering

Grant Grigorian — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 21:41:03 +0000

For the last 6 months since I set myself some fairly concrete goals of volunteering – I have failed to meet or engage in any of them.

I have tried to be involved with the African Community Center in Denver – but have found it hard to engage other fellow volunteers. In general, I’ve been reluctant to research grants for them in part because when I get home from work the last thing I want to do is spend more time in front of a computer filling out another spreadsheet.

I’ve asked ACC’s volunteer coordinator to get me involved with face to face interactions with the people ACC serves.

As far as getting involved in local politics goes – again I have been reluctant because the local GOP seems highly partisan, and much more conservative than I am. I am a political moderate and most local party reps seem highly idealistic. At least judging from a distance – I don’t actually know any of those people. So I’ve got to get out there and get to know these people already…

Corporate Sources of Funding

Grant Grigorian — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 03:04:46 +0000

I spent some time yesterday and today looking for possible corporate funders for ACC. I started with a list of biggest companies in Denver and worked my way through each of them.

Amazing! Somehow I completely underestimated the number of foundation and charitable arms of corporation. Every other company I researched seemed to offer another opportunity to apply for more funds.

I really hope this research will bear fruit.

Volunteering at ACC: Grant Writing Logistics

Grant Grigorian — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 06:10:47 +0000

Today I went to a first ever volunteer “grant writers” meeting at ACC. So far, I’ve haven’t contributed much to the organization and now finally I will have a chance to put myself to good use. I’ve been in contact with ACC for almost two months now.

My assigned task is to research possible corporate donor organizations to which ACC can apply for grants in the fall.

Where I really want to contribute is in how ACC organizes it’s grant writing activities. I would like to set up a platform in which all the volunteers and staff can work together.

I’ve had very successful experience using a wiki for project management purposes, but the people I will be working with at ACC can not be assumed to be comfortable with the wiki language (have you ever edited Wikipedia?).

So I am looking for an easy to use, comprehensive (file uploads, calendar, etc), internet based, FREE project management software. Any ideas?

My first candidate for such a solution will be Basecamp.

Volunteering

Grant Grigorian — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 06:15:32 +0000

I’d like to be a more active volunteer. Volunteer – I don’t particularly like that word – let’s just say “I’d like to be more active in the community.”

What do I mean by more active? What I mean is that I don’t think I want to have my day job be my only productive and social activity. In other words, I don’t want to necessarily stop working when I come home. I want my play time to be at least partially defined by activities which contribute to the creation of something – rather than consumption of something else.

What do I mean by community? I have 3 categories in mind:

Local community
- Local means Denver – or Colorado community. I would love to meet people who want to make this a better place to live. So far, I’ve had great experiences at the African Community Center, which is very close to my apartment.
World community
- I hope to be useful in a more global context over the internet. Though I haven’t yet found anything definitive, I will try Nabuur.com and see where that takes me.
Unknown community
- This category is a chance for me to learn something new. It is “unknown” because before volunteering I will know very little about the community – and the act of getting involved in it will be that much more revealing and beneficial to me.
- So, the first subject of exploration will be Politics. After all, United States is a democracy, and we should be actively participating in shaping our politics. And, given that I am a registered Republican (though a very moderate one) I am thinking of getting to know the Colorado GOP.

The three categories will also define my volunteering efforts: I will split the total time I want to volunteer into 3, each covering one of the categories:

I only hope that I will have the time and the energy to do all these things.

African Community Center: Initial Reaction

Grant Grigorian — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 14:46:35 +0000

For a while now I’ve been thinking about volunteering locally in Denver, and now that I don’t have to spend 3 hours everyday commuting to Boulder I think I can finally devote some time to it.

Yesterday I visited the African Community Center in Denver. The ACC is “Denver’s newest Refugee Resettlement program which welcomes newcomers who have had to flee persecution within their home country. Many of our clients arrive in the United States with little but possess great hope about their lives in America.”

The refugees come from all over:

Ethiopia
Sudan
Bosnia
Somalia
Congo
Seirra Leonne
Cuba
Iraq
Iran
Rwanda
Mauritania
Liberia
Burundi
Afghanistan
Burma
Vietnam

I met with two staff members there and we spent about an hour and half discussing the organization and how I might fit in to be of most use.

I think I have some interesting ideas on how I can leverage some of my skills to their advantage, and I hope to flesh them out here in another post.