Building Lives On Step At A Time
When I first started at Home Inc. I did not plan to be at a community land trust where they build homes for specialized groups in our community. My real dream was to be in a medical invested co-op but I can say that I’ve truly found my home at Home Inc. The very purpose at Home Inc. is to accumulate the funds to build affordable housing for people who are low class and undermined by the housing market. We have partnered with other organizations and as a nonprofit organization ourselves our mission is to strengthen the community and diversity through permanently affordable and sustainable housing through our programs. Over the years Home Inc. has provided many repair grants for current homeowners in Yellow Springs and has over 50 client households currently. We have had no foreclosures and have invested over $5 million into affordable housing.
As a Miller fellow my role at Home Inc. is to provide administrative support including telephone and mail communication workflow. I also organize documents and data in the supporting systems as well as managing the office supplies. As an intern at this organization I also aid in planning events for different house openings and client meetings, reach out to other organizations for partnerships and services, reach out to clients for connection upon something that they were interested in that is now available, and support donations through the donor process work window. I also send out mailing information for appeal letters or newspapers and aid in grant writing.
My day to day experience at Home Inc. consists of me getting the mail in the morning. Afterwards, I head to the office and check the voicemails, as well as prepare myself a cup of coffee and dive into any emails/work plans that have been put on my Miller Fellow spreadsheet by my supervisor or other members of Home Inc. and our director. I attend work meetings throughout the day with my staff and other partnership meetings that I have organized and put on my schedule. I also sometimes meet clients and go to different rentals around Yellow Springs to manage maintenance work and homeowner problems. At the end of my day I spray down the office due to Covid-19 and close everything up.
This nonprofit organization ended up fitting my career goals and education goals perfectly. All I wanted was to impact the world in some type of way with community service and potentially breaking a status quo or statistic. I wanted to be a participant in something that would impact the community in a huge way and make it a better living environment for all types of races and ethnicities. Home Inc. dedicates every resource perfectly to achieve its mission and purpose.
To anyone that sees this post and is thinking of trying this as a co-op I would definitely recommend it. I would say that this is the type of co-op where you have to be able to give a part of yourself to the community and not expect glory or recognition but expect to change and self advocate for those that can not.
