Blooming!!!
Our theme for April at Central Outreach and Advocacy Center has been “Blooming'.” We have been featuring interns, volunteers, and board members on our social media channels. I see these folks as some of the ones who help our staff bloom as well as helping our guests bloom. I thought I would share a few pics with brief captions in this “Kickin’ It With Kimberly” to give you a sense of who some of these folks are who help others bloom.
Without our volunteers, our staff couldn’t bloom, nor could our guests! Pictured here are a few of our volunteers (Jill, Nan, Charles, Eddie and Lisa) but certainly not all of our volunteers! (I just happened to have recent pics of these!)
This is not all of our Board members either, but our Board members are important to the work we do! They support our staff in particular which helps us bloom. I am very grateful!
These three interns have been with us since the fall of 2024. They have been invaluable. I believe that we have watched them bloom as they learned and grew through their work with our guests. Thank you, Laquetta, Briona, and Steve!
We celebrated the interns last week in our new breakroom, a place that I believe will help us bloom as we take a break to grab a cup of coffee or eat our lunch or celebrate folks!
It takes working together to make the staff bloom, who then can help our guests bloom. (I will say that I’m a little skeptical of these three and what they may have been discussing in the lobby one day!)
I’m even more skeptical of these three and what they were discussing after our April Friday guest event!
The bottom line about blooming. We do our best at Central Outreach and Advocacy Center to help our guests bloom, even if it is just in a small way.
During the two days that we had The Home Depot volunteers with us to build our breakroom and renovate a few other rooms, one of our guests, Ray, worked alongside of them both days. Ray is now enrolled in a work program through the Furniture Bank of Metro Atlanta, a position that Sonja helped him get through our Main Frame program. We are so happy for Ray and I know he is blooming!
I recently worked with a guest to get her Georgia State ID. When I handed her the ID voucher, she lit up and said, “I am so happy to get this. It’s going to help me a lot.” I do believe our services help our guests to bloom.
At our recent “Sip and Paint” activity for our guests, one of our favorite guests, “Snappy,” joined us. He wanted me to take his picture which shows him blooming from ear to ear! :-)
I hope you enjoyed reading this version of “Kickin’ It” and I hope life is BLOOMING for you right now!