New Beginnings

Hello Everyone! This is Kim P. writing to you from Community Housing Network. It was nice seeing many of you at our recent mid year training. My Americorps service will be ending a little bit sooner than expected because my husband and I will be moving to China! He received an offer from his company, so I am excited and nervous to start this new chapter of my life in China.

I feel very fortunate to be a part of Americorps. I had been trying to get into the non-profit world for about a year and was having no luck. Americorps helped me get my foot in the the door of the non-profit world. I would will totally recommend Americorps to others trying to enter the world of non-profit.

My time at Community Housing Network (CHN) has been great. I have learned a lot and met a lot of great people, both co-worker and clients.

I work in the Homeless Prevention and Rapid Rehousing Department (HPRP). I have taken calls to screen possible program participants. I have do the face to face intakes and manage these clients all the way through the housing process. When I first started at CHN, we had prevention funds to try and prevent people from being evicted. So I assisted the case managers a lot with intakes, paying utility bills, talked to landlords...anything you can think of. Eventually, our prevention funds were exhausted and we only had Rapid Rehousing funds left. We also lost a couple of case managers to other jobs, so I took on more responsibility by meeting clients at MATTS Salvation Army in Warren. I would give them information about our program, do intakes and help people get housed who were previously homeless. I was very excited the first time I housed a client. It felt really good to help someone all the way through the process from beginning to end.

I have participated in and Oakland County Project Homeless Connect, in a couple of Macomb Community Connection Day and in the Point in time Homeless Count for Oakland County. These experiences were really rewarding because that is really my favorite part of our work, interacting with clients.

Surprisingly, I also enjoyed learning how to use the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS). Because I know that is the system many other agencies use, because my end goal was to be able to use the knowledge I learned through my Americorps service year to obtain a permanent job at CHN or another agency. Obviously that will not be the case now that I will be moving to China, but I think the experience I have had through Americorps at CHN are skills that I can use in China as well. There are hurting people all over the world, so I hope to be able to make a difference in China as well and I think the skills I have learned these past few months are invaluable.

So long for now.

From Your Fellow Americorps member,

Kim P.