Getting to Know You

As you can probably guess, it's been another busy month, but now at the end of a short week of training I thought I would post a quick update before I start vacation!

Milwaukee's been pretty great so far.  I found a place to live pretty quickly in a neighborhood really close to UW-Milwaukee's campus, several bus lines, a street with some nice shops, Lake Michigan a couple blocks away.  Not too shabby, all in all.  I've been on both my campuses now, although I've done more outreach at UWM, and I've met a few people who are really excited about making homes and buildings more energy efficient in Milwaukee.  One thing that makes PIRG, Energy Service Corps' parent organization, different than most other organizations is its' emphasis on training and empowering everyone that we work with, so not only will I be doing a lot of work around the city itself, but a big part of my job will be training students in how to organize our projects themselves.  A good campus organizer can leave their school for a week and everything will go exactly as planned.  So not only will I be working on whatever service projects we do next year, theoretically I'll train all my students how to solve social problems they see in the future, not necessarily related to issues we work on, not necessarily associated with anything PIRG or at their school.  Definitely one step more than my projects last year

This past week, I've been at a less skills based training in Denver, CO.  We've stepped back a little from what we do everyday to talk more about some of the theory behind it, like approaches to social change movements and how different strategies and tactics can accomplish a mission.  The training focused a lot on coming together to talk about things that are kind of obvious but interesting to hear all at once and then going in to break out sessions in small groups to brainstorm around examples.  One of the great things about the Public Interest Network is that it's a very flat organization and it recruits internally a lot.  This means that pretty much everyone in a position of authority started at the lowest rung of the ladder and people from all levels try to get to know as many people as possible from different states, organizations within the network, and levels of authority.  Everyone wants to know what everyone is up to and how they got involved or whatever, and they tell their stories pretty often so you can here how other people have gone from being a canvasser or campus organizer to director of a state PIRG office or leader of an entire organization in the movement.  Since I missed the training at the beginning of the year, this is my first chance to meet people outside of the Wisconsin state office or the Midwest campus team, so that's definitely been pleasant.  The sessions only go from 9 until 6 or so with socials in the evening to help people find groups to hang out with.  We also send out holiday cards to alumni, so on my lunch break I went out of my way to find President Obama's card (which was signed by way more than just the New York team).  I couldn't remember the name of the guy the Dude from the big Lebowski is based on, or I would have signed his, too.  All in all it's been great to get to know some new people, learn some more about the rest of the network, and solidify a little more about how to maximize the impact of a non-profit.

Tomorrow I leave for Aspen, the annual movement-wide vacation.  I don't really plan on doing anything particularly Aspen-y, but I'm looking forward to downtime to catch up on some reading or thrifting while others are hitting the slopes.