Monthly Archives: April 2012

Conference 2012 Workshops

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 REGISTER NOW

Professional Development: This track is good for anyone looking to improve his or her workplace efficiency, grant writing, or overall office morale

  • True Colors – Improve communication skills by identifying your personality strengths
  • Engaging Stakeholders – Identifying Partners that can move your Project Forward
  • Grant Management – Writing Grants, Tracking Grants and Achieving Grant Goals
  • Understanding and Managing Different Generations – Providing Skills to Work with all Ages
  • Coalition Building – How to Make it Work

CAP Track: Although specialized for our agencies this track includes a variety of topics that are useful for service providers.

  • DBA FACSPro Database: Tips and Tricks
  • How to Know what your Community Really Needs: Community Needs Assessments and the 3-Year Plan
  • Community Services Block Grant 101

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Basic Needs Track: This track will provide relevant and solution focused workshops for those working on the ground directly serving our community.

  • From Stress to Stability: How to Maximize your Client’s Money
  • Learn to access the most current 211 Resource and Referral Information
  • Tips and Tricks on how to use MyCase to most Effectively Assist Customers – Advanced
  • How to work Effectively with Disenfranchised Populations – Panel
  • De-escalation – Learn Conflict Resolution Skills

Policy and Advocacy Track: This track will not only help you understand the process but YOUR role in it. This is aimed to share important ways for agencies and clients to connect to policy.

  • Advocacy and Budget 101
  • Legislative Wrap-Up and Telling the Story of Poverty
  • Federal Nutrition Programs and their Impact on Low-Income Households
  • Health Care Policy and How it Affects Low-Income Utahns
  • Utah Housing Policies Affecting low-Income Utahns
  • Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
  • Basics of Community Organizing

CHECK BACK SOON FOR COMPLETE AGENDA WITH SPEAKERS!

 FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE 2 DAY CONFERENCE CLICK HERE

Are you a dog person?

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 If you are you might like to read this.  If you aren’t you might like to read this.

I never really considered myself a dog person.  My wife on the other hand loves dogs.  When we got married last year she had to send her mutt to live with her parents as I have relatively bad allergies and so the pup couldn’t come to live with us. While I like dogs just fine (besides being scared of any that weigh over 20lbs after being bitten a couple times when living in Mexico) I have never had much interest in having my own dog, for a whole host of reasons.
TO start off I am not fond of picking up their excrement, having their hair all over my house, needing to worry about going home to let Fido out, having to find a dog-sitter for when were are out of town  – I could go on and on.
In fact I am going to … I know I never want a dog in my bed, don’t particularly want to spend my hard earned cash to get Fido spayed, de-wormed, groomed,
through puppy school, etc — and heaven forbid have to deal with some $2500 hip displacement surgery when the the only rational decision is to have the dog put down.
To be completely honest, being an adventurous traveller I’d probably end up eating dog if I were in China and it were offered to me.
SO I don’t sound like much of a dog person, right?
WELL, a few weeks ago, at my wife’s insistence, I agreed to make a trip out to Daybreak to go see a puppy that she had found on KSL.
Knowing that my arms would break out into a rash upon petting it — I was sure we would just play with it for a few minutes and then go home.  The imminent rash never came.
That’s right, my wife tracked down a pup that I’m not allergic that doesn’t hardly shed– a hypo-allergenic breed. Before I knew it we were loading the 9lb, 10wk old pup into the car to take home.
NOW four weeks later her name is Lucy (we named her on our 1- year anniversary).  She has been de-wormed, has a crate, toys, food and snacks, a tracking chip implanted in her shoulder, and an appointment to be spayed.  She is also in her second week of puppy school.  She is sweet as can be, and very mellow and obedient for being only 3 months old.  Since we’ve had her my wife and I have begun to take lots of walks and make more trips to hike in the mtns, and the TV has stayed off.  I think my blood pressure might even have gone down.  Having Lucy also makes our lil’ duplex feel more like a home.  As my wife and I share the tasks of taking care of her, coordinating and working together — I can see how we might operate if we were to have a child soon.
SO the short and sweet of it is that I now see that the many benefits of having a dog really can outweigh the tasks and work associated with it.  Just look at that face!
I guess the point is that many of the perceptions I had about dogs and dog owners were other people perceptions that I took on, and it took me trying something new (listening to my wife’s plea’s) to realize I really am a dog person. Does this apply to anything in your life?

Step back, evaluate, and reassess

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As many of you may know I am currently finishing my Masters of Public Administration at the University of Utah. This semester I’m enrolled in a class that incorporates service learning into the curriculum. For those of you that aren’t familiar with this term, service learning is a learning strategy that integrates community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience. As part of the course requirements are three service learning reflection assignments. These assignments essentially allow us to reflect on our experiences and reflect on them critically. It’s a way to step back, look holistically, force your self to reflect, and if needed…re-evaluate.

I bring this up because I recently went through this process at CAP Utah. I had found myself so caught up in the immediate that the important was getting lost. So I took a day and took a step back from my work, looked at my job holistically, and forced myself to reflect on the work I was doing as CAP Utah’s Policy Analyst.

So what did I find? Essentially, I found what I expected. I spent far too much time on what came to my desk that day, and I was loosing what I filed away yesterday. I was invigorated after this. I put my obsessive-compulsive hat on and went to work. I organized all my assignments into three categories. Those three categories were then assigned a day of the week. I pulled out the color coordination, and presto a better-structured workweek.

We all hear this from our colleagues or even from our own mouths, “I need to get more organized.” So I encourage everyone to stop talking and start doing. Give yourself your own service learning reflection assignment, and don’t forget to put a due date on it. Put yourself back into school mode, which for many of us is cramming before the day the assignment is due, but just get it done!

My wedding and its budget

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For those of you who don’t know, I got engaged to my best friend of 10 years this past December. Of course, it was joyful and we spent a couple of months celebrating our bliss. Then reality set in. We have to plan this wedding and more importantly pay for it. We are so lucky to have the generous help of friends and family but planning and budgeting for this type of event is no small feat!  Which leads me to the topic of this blog: budgeting.

The first thing about money and  budgeting is that it’s hard. Now, I know this doesn’t come as a shock to anyone who has ever tried, but I have to tell you, I am finding it challenging in new ways. Let me explain. I am a girl, who at one point in my life thought up a dream wedding. Well, let me tell you that is exactly what it was – a dream :)   All jokes aside our society has created a market for weddings, cars, and dreams and sometimes it is really hard to say no to something you really want; and for a moment you think it might make you happy. But even when you realize that it won’t your still left with questions about how to make it all work.

This leads me to my second point. Talking about money generally makes people uncomfortable. How do you know what to do without seeking advice, asking questions, or being honest about your budget? Growing up in a low-income house we talked about money ALL the time. It surrounded every activity, dinner, and certainly every time we wanted something for school. So now that I live in a world of financial literacy, refunds, and everything to do with money I am often taken aback at its continuously illusive behavior. Here are some gems of advice I’ve received about budgeting for my wedding (you’ll notice none actually give any sort of dollar amount).

  • Don’t spend too much on your dress after all it is only worn once.
  • Well, if you go with these pieces it will look like you spent a lot of money without actually having done so.
  • You don’t want to do that, it will look really cheap.
  • Other words commonly used to describe a value: classy, simple, elegant, tacky, and cheap.

After all that I think, well no wonder people don’t talk about it. What does it mean if we over pay for a dress and under pay on linens? Personally, I have no idea but it made me think about the work that I do and how this scenario could be applied anywhere. Where do we begin with families? And how do we make sure that they feel comfortable talking about this very personal topic. For me it is a wedding (which I am very lucky to be able to budget for) but for other folks they are talking about food on the table. We ask families to budget when they don’t have consistent income, we ask them to save when they are overwhelmed by medical debt, and then we ask them to TRUST us – which by far is the greatest ask.

My third point? There are ways to figure it out and it starts with a conversation. It starts with asking for help (which believe me, I have had to do) and hopefully it ends with a support system. Maybe it’s your family or maybe it’s a non-profit like Fair Credit Foundation, but between the two there’s help to sort out the challenges in budgeting and hopefully make it a little easier and our futures a little brighter. After all I am sure excited about mine!