Lucy Hennessay, Junior Sociology Major and Hispanic Studies and Genders minor, shares about their internship with the Blue Mountain Action Council called Commitment to Community in Walla Walla, WA
“My name is Lucy Hennessy and I am a Junior Sociology major and Hispanic Studies and Gender Studies double minor. This summer, I am an intern at a branch of the Blue Mountain Action Council called Commitment to Community (C2C). I am interning with two other lovely Whitman students, Grace and Alissa. Commitment to Community helps connect clients with services they may need, whether these be services provided by BMAC, the City of Walla Walla,
or another organization. They go into neighborhoods to connect with and work directly with clients. They also help neighbors get to know each other through community parties and host free workshops such as the Financial Security workshop and Strengthening Families workshop. A typical week in my life at Commitment to Community includes many different activities. We start out the week with C2C staff meeting, in which we go over the events for the week. We often have meetings scheduled with other BMAC staff, as well as individuals from around the community that we collaborate with, such as representatives from Walla Walla Community College or the City of Walla Walla. We also go over any evening community events we may be hosting, such as a block party, a workshop, or an open house to help people sign up for the Working Families Tax Credit. Our main project as interns is to conduct a story collecting project for C2C. For this project, we are interviewing neighbors that C2C has had a connection with in order to measure C2C’s impact, as well as issues within the community that C2C could help address. We ask the
interviewees to tell us five stories: about how their involvement with C2C, their work or home life, their family, their relationship with themselves, and their spirituality has changed over the past few years. Some of these interviews are conducted in English, but the majority of the neighbors we interview are more comfortable speaking in Spanish. One
of our three supervisors asks the questions, while one of us interns takes notes and audio records the interview. Immediately after, we score the stories based on how positive or negative the situation was, how the person felt about it, and any action they took to address the situation. After the initial scoring, I go back and create a summary of the interview. Later, we go back and create a final score for the interview with a group of people that include those who were present at the interview as well as those who were not.
Another part of this project includes surveying neighbors to see what services they may be interested in. We formulated a survey that includes all of the services that C2C can help connect neighbors with, from referrals for help with basic needs to stop sign or sidewalk installation. We go into the neighborhoods in the evening and distribute surveys by knocking on people’s doors and helping them complete the survey.”