Alumni Feature: Kelsey Schrock
Kelsey Schrock, who graduated in 2013 with a major in social work and a minor is Spanish, writes from Managua, Nicaragua, where she has started a 2-year volunteer position.
“The transition here has gone quite smoothly and I’m already feeling like this is my new home. The year is wrapping up here as the classes here at the Cultural Center just ended last week. The other volunteer and I finished teaching the English class and are already planning for the new class that starts in February. I’m also accompanying the activities in arts promotion office, which is in charge of the orchestra, choir, dance, theater, painting and other music lessons here. Not the area I expected to be working in, but as they have said this is “the face of the center” because this is how the community sees and comes to know the Center.
I’ve been thinking of [GC’s social work classes] recently as I’ve been working on the evaluation process here at the Center as well. For most people the topic of evaluation seems boring, but of course as a social work nerd I was excited to dive in! Since our program’s funding comes mostly from a sister program in the states we aren’t required to write many grants therefore there’s not really an incentive to have specific evaluation data besides for our own knowledge. Kind of the same thing I ran into with social work documentation in [field placement].
So currently our documentation is kind of a mess and so we’re working on making a uniform format for evaluation of activities. Of course the social worker in me realized that also requires a plan and assessment for each activity first, so little by little I’ve been interviewing workers here and trying to figure out the best format. It’s nice to feel that something concrete that I learned can be implemented where I’m working, but of course I’m sure I’ve also implemented countless other “aprendizajes” from my social work education that I don’t even realize.
I’ve really enjoyed working on a community level and getting to learn the methodology of public education. It’s also been exciting to get involved in some of the violence-prevention activism going on here in Managua. Here is our blog link if you want to keep up on what’s going on here!”