Appalachia Service Project is BIG!

Since my first official job (way back in 2006) as an assistant to the summer maintenance staff at Payne Elementary, I have worked for a variety of non-profit and educational institutions, within a variety of hierarchical organizational structures. Apart from technically working for the U.S. State Department (which obviously employs thousands of individuals) under the confines of my Fulbright grant, I have generally worked for much smaller entities. At Homes on the Hill in Columbus, Ohio, our staff of 8 individuals occupied the second floor of a church in the Hilltop neighborhood. As an intern with La Plaza in Indianapolis, I was one of three summer interns working alongside a summer program staff of approximately 8 teachers plus our program director, plus other La Plaza staff (not involved with our Summer Discovery program) totaling maybe somewhere between 10 and 15 individuals. Finally, in Argentina, I worked on school staffs composed of anywhere between 30 and 100 teachers/professors. In those last school environments, I didn't know all my other colleagues on staff, primarily because all teachers are not present at all times in the school facility (unlike their professional counterparts in the US). This consistent coming and going of educators (throughout the school day) is what permitted me to work in three distinct schools throughout the year. But I digress from this post's point about my current employment and Appalachia Service Project's sheer size....

Sometimes I have moments where I must remind myself that Appalachia Service Project is an extremely large organization. At our headquarters in Johnson City, Tennessee, there is a staff of approximately 30 people working year-round. During ASP's summer youth program in 2013, there were just over 14,000 volunteers deployed to work on home improvements in Appalachia, guided by over 100 summer staff, construction consultants and other support staff. Those volunteers completed over 3,600 projects in homes, serving 537 families and 1,405 individuals. If you add on to all those numbers the work that we do here in the year-round centers, yes, the picture and vision grows even bigger. Each of the 4 centers operates with a staff of 4 Lilly Fellows (that's me!) and a Center Supervisor, and last year the year-round centers worked with a total of 3,000-4,000 adult volunteers (if I'm not mistaken). Certainly not to be forgotten are other support staff at each of our centers. Our cook here in Jonesville is a total hoot, and our maintenance guy and his sidekick are always good for a laugh and juicy local gossip over a cup of coffee. Without invoking too much negative imagery, ASP is a monster.

I imagine you're getting the big picture organizationally of ASP at this point, but occasionally I myself lose sight of that overall framework and get stuck mentally in my little bubble here on the hill in Jonesville. Sometimes this is a difficult battle to fight as we generally are so busy working with volunteers and families in Lee County. While I'm living here, I imagine that it will be just two or three times per month that I venture beyond our county lines, and fewer times than that I will interact at length with our central office staff in Johnson City. I have already seen in some ways how this can shape our identity as a year-round center, for better and for worse.

Most recently, at the end of October, ASP hosted a large advancement/philanthropy event called Work Miracles in Johnson City. The weekend brought together a great number of ASP's (financial) supporters to hear updates on what the organization is doing and how it is dreaming and planning to do bigger and better things. I, fortunately, was able to take Friday "off" from work here in Jonesville to travel to Johnson City and assist in some final event preparations as well as enjoy the kick-off festivities of that evening. However, besides the year-round Tri-Cities staff (who live in Johnson City), I was the only individual from any of the year-round centers able to be present at this very important organizational event. Besides the networking interests, that essentially, necessarily plague any young professional, I had a genuine interest in attending Work Miracles to capture a better understanding of how our mission, vision, work out in the field with volunteers and relationships within our community all come together in this identity that I might embrace to answer the question: What does it mean to work for ASP?

I'm just over two months into my role as a Lilly fellow and will have only 10, short months more in this particular role at the year-round center to define and decipher and, occasionally, muddle my way through what it means to work with this gentle giant that is Appalachia Service Project. Because it's big, there are a lot of layers to work through in regards to organizational values, hierarchy, partnerships, goal setting, working relationships that ultimately feel like family...and the list could go on an on. The layers are anything but simple and the inquisitive, analytical, motivated part of me wants to dig into all those layers, understand them quickly and efficiently, and then reassemble them in a way that makes sense (for me and ASP). Just like any homemade chocolate cake, the more layers it has, the greater chance the chocolate of the mission statement and the cream of relationships with families in the community will mix (pardon my awful, love-of-baking fueled analogy). And so, I doubt that I will devour the layers quickly or efficiently, but, instead will be a better connoisseur of the organizational culture feast before me if I simply take it in one "forkful" at a time within the lines of this blog.