So this year, as my job fills considerably more time than last year, I have significantly less time to update everyone on what I'm doing. Being an organizer is hard (yes, organizer is a job category. Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin don't have much respect for it, but it's just like "administrative assistant" or "freelance photographer" or whatever). Starting a new program from scratch is extra hard. Sometimes it seems like I don't have much to show for everything I spend my time on, even when I'm spending well over 80 hours of my time in one week. 
I've attached some pictures from some of the projects we've worked on so far. We've gone into K-12 classrooms to teach activity-based lessons about energy, the environment, and how kids can use less. We've visited a transitional home for homeless people to teach them how to make sure their apartment, once they have one, isn't wasting them energy and therefore lots of money. We've had Price is Right themed tables on campus (not my idea originally, which might be surprising if you are familiar with my history with the Price is Right) to talk to the campus community about how much money they can save by switching to a low flow shower head or properly using power strips. 
We have gone into people's homes and apartments to look for how they are using energy and how they can use less right away. Maybe if I calculate how many hours I will spend on this project (which will be far more than the 1700 I am required to, rest assured), if the aggregate amount of money saved on energy bills is greater than the value of my time for all those hours this year of service will have been of value.
But the point of doing service is that the time spent on it is not quantifiable, which is part of the struggle. The value of building the skills of my interns isn't quantifiable, and building partnerships with community organizations, and creating a record that the next Energy Service Corps volunteers can tout for their own credibility, all of it is value that I have helped create. If such value were quantifiable, volunteerism wouldn't even be necessary, because there would be an actual market where people could be fairly compensated for the essential contributions to society that society choses not to compensate fairly or sometimes at all (social work, teaching anyone?).
One of the hardest parts, however, is that my organization isn't, at heart, a service organization. The other people I work with have literally no background in service (I sort of forgot that that is even possible). Other organizers don't always understand the why, the the program's focus on wins might make sense for its (significantly larger) political side, but it is slightly odd to context service projects in that mindset.
But then we do an energy assessment of someone's home and they make a $50 donation because they are so supportive of what we're working on. Or we talk to someone at a table and they decide to sign up to have an assessment. Or a group of students at a high school for kids who are at risk of dropping out shake our hands and say thank you as they file out of class after a lesson. Or I over hear my students tell a friend how they've changed since being involved. Or whatever. It doesn't matter if they how is what I would chose, or the why makes sense to everyone involved, or if my bank account reflects the hours I've invested. Some of the strategies and tactics have pushed me outside where I am comfortable, like cold calling professors to ask for 5 minutes of their class time and making announcements in classes of several or several hundred (the smaller ones were hardest, trust me), or even just talking to people about an issue I still don't feel that knowledgable about. Learning how far I can go, and what opportunities I can open for my students, has definitely reminded me not to get too set on what is and is not possible, because what is possible is always just a little bit more.
If you want to keep tabs of what I'm up to in between posts, you can check out our chapter's Facebook page, and yes I realize that I am summing up my activities by my work's Facebook page. That is an accurate reflection of my life right now.
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