Week 2 crashes in.

Well, this week has started with a bang, of sorts… When we walked in Monday morning the entire system had crashed. It is quite evident the great need that non-profits subsist under. Because I’m a technician I was able to troubleshoot the problem fairly quickly but due to my lack of knowledge of the infrastructure of our system I was hard pressed to identify what to do about it. I had to call in our local volunteer technician who was instrumental in the original setup. Poor guy spent his entire work day here trying to get us up and running. By the way if there are any good Windows NT-2000-2003 Server Technicians within eyeshot of this posting, we could always use a few more volunteers.
Which is a good segue into another topic… The amount and level of help we need. It seems we have a problem in 3 areas when it comes to our foundation. One is getting committed Tutor/Mentors that are willing to stick with the children for the long haul, our goal is to take them from 7th grade through college to a career. That’s about a 10 to 15 year commitment and everybody understands that life sometimes gets in the way. The problem is getting the right volunteer for either working directly with the children or working with the center to maintain our systems and services. Furthermore, there’s something to be said for having a role model from your own cultural background; information seems more relevant and cogent from that perspective. Finally, as with all non-profits, money is the wobbling 3rd leg of the stool. Anyone who has ever been to, through or around Cabrini Greens knows the reason we exist and the depth of our need.
However, our programs goes further Cabrini Connections is the program we run to tutor and mentor children in this area. We take the best practices and other useful information we’ve gathered along the way and put it in a knowledgebase to share with other service providers and tutoring programs.