Renae Smack's Field Reports

And We're Rollin' on the River......

Renae Smack — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:13:03 -0600

Things have been up and down, that why we're Rollin' on a river!
Our kids just did a Health Rocks presentation at The YMCA. They did a great job! The kids were really responsive during the presentation. They did the one I like with the straws. Health Rocks is a presentation for 8-12 year olds done by kids around that age and older. It is lead by a teen (Yasmeen) who birthday was on the eighth of October she is wonderful and 17. (Happy Birthday Yaz!) I am proud to work with this beautiful well rounded young woman who loves children and is a born leader. She would work with children no matter what the circumstance.

We are presently working on a presentation for Health Rocks that we will be presenting at the Coastal Carolina Fair. Ten kids will participate in this presentation. We have two kids who are creating a Folklore Project in honor of their mother who has passed away. This project is a media project. Once they have completed it I will send you guys a copy of it. We will also have an art exhibit one of our students is drawing. We will also being doing a cooking presentation. They will be cooking no bake cookies. Our second and third graders will make that presentation. Yasmeen is the super teen leader supervisor who keeps me grounded. Keeps me forever pushing on!

Last month we trained a group of middle school teens to become mentors. Our training lasted three weeks. It covered documentation, communicating with your teen leader and communicating with the kids, positive reinforcement for good behavior and a point system for those who are hard cases. We also talked about maintaining your grades while helping others. We created a time for our youth leaders to work on their own projects after the kids have been served. The final portion of the training was working on a service project. So far the trainees are doing okay with the kids. We have had no major catastrophes. Yasmeen and I revamped the whole system. Volunteers will have more support because of what we changed.

We have financial challenges at this time. We continue to push forward. We have a website that you can donate on. We are working on some creative ways for fundraising.
The links are below. http://cash.zeropricetags.com/?REF=55870

http://cards.swiftrewards.net/?ref=Hipkhouse

I have been working on collaboration with the Art Institute in Charleston to host a graphic arts class for our kids. I am hoping that the program will be ongoing as the Art Institute offers a host of other programs that our kids would be interested. We are in the beginning stages of this project. We are also working on a mentorship program with Clemson finding mentors for kids whose parent or parents are prisoners. Building Dreams is the name of that program.

Well that all for now.....Bye
Renae

Let's Try This Again!

Renae Smack — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 23:07:05 -0600

Last week as I sat and I wrote, I was so impressed by the new set up to go with my brand new second term and so I added the picture and wa-la everything went away. So here I am again going to bring you up on what's been happening with Renae.

Back in April a group of us went to conference in Baltimore hosted by NeighborWorks.

I was very impressed by the commitment of the kids. In Baltimore their kids are doing really innovative things. I heard poetry, skits, role playing and a lot of other things they were involved in. Their community was a very big deal to most of the teens who attended the conference and I came away with this wonderful feeling. Some of the things they said in the role play made me examine myself. One young man was the executive director of a center. He had asked one of the teens at his center to come to the board meeting, when the teen arrived he handed him the agendas to hand out. He asked him to greet people at the door, the adult was the child in this role play so the adult actually never became apart of the meeting because the adult (young man) kept coming up with different things for the child to do. I had to ask myself do we really listen to them when they speak, do we treat them as if they should be grateful for the attention we give them, or do we appreciate their since of style, the fresh way they look at things, their ability to move on after they have been disappointed yet again by an well meaning adult who after all thinks they don't really know what they want. We don't give them enough credit, and we don't give them a chance to use the tools we give them. I'm am blessed to be working with a group of kids who are intelligent, trustworthty, honest and creative.

They might be young but they are more reliable then some adults I know and they work just as hard as everyone else at our center to make it the great place it is. Hat's off to you Yasmine, Soncerae, Lisa, and the rest of the Youth leadership program for all you do!

Our trip to Baltimore also produced another eyeopener. After we went through the classes we had to come up with a project to bring back home that would represent Being the Bridge You Want to Build. We were so hipe about it we planned it at the airport. It is titled Neighbors Helping Neighbors. We came home and began working on it even though we had another event planned for a week before this one would kick off.

So guess what, the Celebration Of Your Gifts to Us was a success. (The one planned the week before.) We celebrated the partners we have made over the last year and we had food served by the hospitality committee (man can they cook!) and we gave away some pretty neat stuff, certificates, magnets these neat cups I created while in Home Depot looking for flowers for my garden. Yes, and she gardens when she can find the time.

Well anyway needless to say , it was a wonderful event.
Then one week later our Neighbors Helping Neighbors Week kicks off. We were suppose to have a jump castle, all kind of fun stuff for the kids and It rains. We're hoping for this great neighborhood turnout because we've partnered with the City of Charleston, Family Services, Lowcountry Housing and Trust and a host of others to bring to the people all this great information and prizes and it's pouring down rain. IT WAS GREAT! People still came out the, Mayor of Charleston proclaimed it National Neighborworks Week and off we started.

I have literally been on roller skates since then. ( I take that back, I never took off the roller skates! ha-ha.) We identified eight houses in the neighborhood that needed small construction jobs done to get them to the point that they could get effective weatherization offered by another group called The Sustainability Institute. The identification of the houses came from a partnership we made last year with The Lead Base Initiative with the City of Charleston. We have a group name Mission Fuge who did all the work on the houses for the last 6 weeks. We have seen so much community growth and community pride since we began our mission one year ago, Rev. King and I. Then guess what? Summer camp opened. Here we go again!

And The Beat Goes On!

Renae Smack — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 10:20:31 -0600

Hi everyone,

Hey Pink House, say what!

Well the kids at the Pink House continue to amaze me with their dedication to the programs hosted there.

They are growing leaps and bounds due to the different programs offered here at the Neighborhood Resource Center. I can honestly say I can see this community beginning to embrace the PINK HOUSE in their community. Dondre and Darius Simmons presented a service learning project called Zig the Pig to the Ardmore/Sherwood Forest neighborhood association on last month. They are the get this ZIG Ambassadors for the project representing two schools ( St. Andrews Middle and Stono Park Elementary).They are also my newphews (oh I'm just so proud of how far they've come since they came here!) This is a first in the history of the community to have children as a part of the community meeting. Check out the first video we made!

What's A Zig Ambassador?

Go PINK HOUSE, SAY WHAT!

This group of kids created a commercial with the help of our parent involvement program here hosted at the PINK HOUSE. One of the parents used countless hours to assist the children in creating a video which they spliced and diced until they got Zig II.

The PINK HOUSE KIDS are now working on a computerized radio show to be hosted on Blogtalkradio.com. Wait to you see (or should I say hear) all the hard work these kids have put into this project.

Our prospective date to air is April 20,2007. Yes, that tomorrow, and boy am I nervous! I can only image how the kids are feeling about know. The time will be 4:30pm til 5:30pm.

On last week the local radio station who has partnered with us to make the radio show a reality, invited our kids to the radio station to see how radio shows work behind the scenes. They really got a lot of good information and they got a chance to talk on the radio to see how it feels. Hats off to Citadel Broadcasting for their involvement in the community. Thanks Ms. Toby Smith from Heaven Talk 1390 am and Gentry Via for his time and dedication to the community and to the PINK HOUSE KIDS!

Listen out for WPHK that those (WONDERFUL PINK HOUSE KIDS).

The Ardmore/Sherwood Forest Newsletter has a new face thanks to Rev. C. King and our new edition Ms. Shirley Washington. They took my amaturistic attempt at community reporting to a whole new level of community organizing, and communicating with the community. Hats off ladies, You did a great job!

Our next event is an appreciation meeting for stakeholders in the community. The meeting will be the first of it's kind. It will be hosted outside with food and awards to say thank you to businesses in the neigborhood who care about The Ardmore/Sherwood Forest community.

Well, I got some much to do and so little time.......

Renae Out...........

Hey PINK HOUSE Say What.......

Happy New Year and All That Jazz! Jingle,Jingle,Jingle!

Renae Smack — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 20:07:01 -0700

Happy New year everyone. I hope everyone had a happy New Year. My new year is as busy as my end of the year events were. First let me say that the Pink House kids are great. The staff I'm working with are great. My supervisor is great and as busy as I am. We just recently got 20 Dell computers from a group who wanted to give our kids computers for Christmas. This is the second group that has donated computers to our kids. A local group in our area also gave our kids some great christmas gifts. We are offering a webcasting class to the children and parents in our community. We also had a group donate some dictionaries to our kids.

On the community level, we are working on our goals to intergrate the community into the center and we have more traffic everyday. We had a neighborhood breakfast that was a smash hit for the seniors it was sponsored for as well as the younger set of residents who attended. We had the usual southern breakfast but we also had great speakers and singing by the local youth choir and gulla poetry by a local poet.

Our new service project will have a lot of techie things attached to it, webcasting, podcasting, possibly even radio broadcasting. We plan to make our own commercials and advertisements. Stay tune for the next phase. Fun, Fun Fun!

Renae Out..........

Whew! I missed writing to ya!

Renae Smack — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 07:28:26 -0600

Hey Everyone,

I 've really missed writing to you guys. First let me say the new changes look good. It is also informative. At the Pink House we are working on a Electronic post card for the children at the Center. They are simply wonderful. The children are in touch with children from all over the world.

I don't think there are enough hours in the day to do everything that is required to make things happen. The kids are totally great! The staff I'm working with totally open to the new changes we are putting in place. Oh yeah, we have a new Chief of Police and the community is totally excited about that.

The neighborhood awareness of what's happening at the Pink House is making a name for us. The community comes to us with questions, comments, and participation in our projects. The electronic post cards are just one of the different techy things we have going on at the PINK HOUSE.

Well off I go to work!

Great Blogging with ya!

Renae out