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Student Travelogue Index > Travelogue Michael Cao Entry 5: Working with Sacramento’s ‘Weed and Seed’ Program Entry 4: Taking lessons from Sacramento’s young people Entry 3: Learning on the job Entry 2: Touring ’Frisco Entry 1: Pursuing social work in politico city Working with Sacramento’s ‘Weed and Seed’ Program Sacramento, Calif. Aug. 22, 2005 For the past two weeks at the Sacramento Mutual Housing Association, I have worked on formatting and designing the seasonal Weed and Seed newsletter. This required me to obtain reports from influential members of the community and allowed me the chance to see the good and the bad that are really happening in the community. The Weed Team involves the Problem-Oriented Police Officers and Code Enforcement Officers. They provided the newsletter with statistics of what has been “cracked-down” on, such as solid waste violations, animal control and auto theft. They also provided hotline numbers for specific resources requested by the non-English speaking residents. The Seed Team involves the city council member, assembly member and community president. They have reported the types of programs that they have or will institute in the community such as a Junior Giants baseball team and a children’s museum in Sacramento – a first for the city. As for my other internship at the Asian Pacific Community Counseling Center, I helped our youth dance group with their fundraising carwash. They raised about $500 in just five hours of work. That’s pretty impressive. Since the girls have not come to our weekly meetings lately, this has shown to my supervisors and I that this is summer time. Time for a break. Time to enjoy themselves. Although I have only worked with these girls for this summer, they appear to be slacking off, and I can’t blame them because I probably went through such a phase back in high school, too. For some reason or another, I feel as if I want to help the youth become more focused, and I wonder if that’s something I could do as a psychologist. Besides my internships, I’ve been traveling lately -- outside of Sacramento, including a trip to Houston, Texas, to visit my dad’s family, for a family reunion. And last weekend I visited home. But I have two more weeks up here in Sacramento, and I hope to make the best of them! Taking lessons from Sacramento’s young people Sacramento, Calif. Aug. 3, 2005 After several weeks, I feel I’m finally settling into what I am doing with my internships. At the Sacramento Mutual Housing Association, I’ll be responsible for three things. Although this is a nonprofit housing agency, I’m working in the Community Organization Department, which allows me to apply my psychology and sociology majors. The first two tasks overlap: I’m working with youths at two of our residential sites to get them to come together for a youth council meeting. Here I talk to them and guide them in voicing their interests and opinions about what they want in the neighborhoods where they live. Although I’m used to leading and directing people in groups, it’s usually to have them do what I want or think they should. However, as an SMHA community organizer, I’ll approach the residents and generally ask them what they want, what they need and how they can get it. This is interesting and new to me: we’re letting the residents take control of their lives and plan for the future of their community. My third task is to coordinate the Weed and Seed quarterly newsletter. This will give me the chance to talk to our city council member, assembly member, resident leaders and local officers about what they’re doing to better the Avondale/Glen Elder neighborhoods. These tasks will take up the rest of my internship. I look forward to working closer to residents and see what visions they have for their community. It’s exciting to see change happen from bottom to top, rather than the usual top down. With the Asian Pacific Community Counseling Center, I have started working with Second Step, a drug and alcohol prevention program for youth. I realized that it is hard to break through to the middle schoolers, because you have to build some trust before they can open up to you. I know this because as my co-worker and I attempted to run a training meeting, the students were pretty quiet. Then when my supervisors jumped in to improvise and help us, and they were suddenly responsive because they’re used to working with my supervisors. Lesson learned: must make people feel comfortable and trustworthy before seeing any progress. I did use icebreakers, but they were still uninterested … gotta find a better way that suits them at their age. Lastly, this week is the end of Summer Session I. I have to finish two papers this week, one for each of my internships. I have to apply theories I learned in the classroom to the real world problems I see at my internship sites. After this week, I’ll be stress free and not have to worry about getting work done every other night! Vacation anyone? Learning on the job Sacramento, Calif., July 13, 2005 It’s pretty quiet up here in Sac-town. I’m doing a dual-internship, and at one site I’m still moving around as they try to find the best fit for me. Anyhow, my goal is to learn something new every day and, so far, I’ve succeeded. For example, over at Sacramento Mutual Housing Association, when I went to visit the residents at the different sites, I learned that both the adults and the children are interested and want to change their run-down neighborhoods for the better. The changes and initiatives start with the residents, not the community organizers. In addition, I got a lesson about my Vietnamese culture, history and language from one of the staff at my second internship, the Asian Pacific Community Counseling Center. He went on for about an hour because I had been talking to one of the other interns in Vietnamese about how the youth (like her and me) these days may not know much about our past and who we are. Although he spoke in a different dialect and used complex terms, I could pull out the main ideas and concepts that I feel are important … proving I do learn something new every day, even if it’s not related to work. Touring ’Frisco San Francisco, Calif., July 4, 2005 About 12 of us from the Sacramento internship program headed over to San Francisco on Friday night for a long weekend in the city. One of the interns, April, graciously hosted us for the weekend at her house, and gave us a tour around all of ‘Frisco. We crossed over the Golden Gate Bridge by car, and then walked back halfway by foot to take some pictures It was extremely windy, and being the smart Southern California guy that I am, I was the only one wearing shorts because I didn’t think to bring pants to the Bay Area. Later, we headed down to Sausalito (makes me think of those delicious cookies), which seems like a nice place to retire. From down at sea level, we headed up to what we dubbed “One Tree Hill,” a hill overlooking the bridge and the bay. Its one lonely tree was bent for life because of the wind – same wind that was making me sorry for only bringing shorts to the Bay Area. Next, we headed to Lombard Street, “the crookedest street in the world,” according to the sign. It was extremely steep on the side going up and crooked on the side going down. We drove down to the “touristy” Pier 39, for some seafood. Nearby, we saw a store that sold UCLA, USC, Stanford, and Cal apparel … but no UCI??? We asked the shopkeeper, but they said that we weren’t popular enough up there. That was disappointing. After dinner we dropped by Ghirardelli Square, and bought some – what else? – chocolate. When we got home, we karaoke-ed until 3:30 a.m. Fun times: dancing and singing. We have some characters in this group. Sunday we headed down to the pier again, because we all wanted to check out the infamous prison at Alcatraz. But it was already sold out! Instead, we shopped the souvenir store before leaving beautiful, cool San Francisco behind for the dry heat of Sacramento. Pursuing social work in politico city Sacramento, Calif., June 30, 2005 I decided to do internships in Sacramento because it would allow me to “travel abroad” – or at least out of SoCal – while also getting credit for class (Social Ecology 195 Field Study, for future reference and if anybody’s interested). Otherwise, I could have stayed in the O.C. and done my internships. I also feel that since this is my first time away from home and on my own (aww … don’t I sound spoiled), I’m forcing myself to grow up, become independent, learn how to cook my own food, pay my own bills, etc. My hometown is Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., in San Bernardino County (yes, where they filmed “Next Friday”). For those of you who don’t know where that is, it’s down the street from Las Vegas. I just finished my third year at UC Irvine, where I’m a double major in psychology and social behavior & sociology. I am a part of the University Catholic Community at UCI, and am also a member of the track and field team. Most of the other UCI students in the Sacramento Internship Program are political science majors, or something related, so they work mainly in the Capitol. Since I am not a poli sci major, I guess I don’t fit there working with politicians. Rather, I’m interning at two non-profit organizations that are more related to my majors. My first site is called the Sacramento Mutual Housing Association. This association is involved with engaging the community's residents into productive programs such as Community Watch, and with finding or building affordable housing for low-income residents. However, I am appointed to work at a branch or subdivision of this agency, called the "Weed and Seed." This is a collaborative program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice that unites communities to weed out violence and community deterioration, and seed in revitalizing programs and events. I will be working either with law enforcement for the weed side, or social work and human services on the seed side. The second site is called the Asian Pacific Community Counseling Center. Here my title will be Youth Prevention Educator. I will work directly with the youth of the Asian Pacific Islander Community. We will work one on one with them and assist with any possible problems at school, at home, in relationships or life in general. Most of the time we will just hang out with the teens. My supervisors actually encourage me to come up with my own programs to engage the youth into being productive. In addition, we plan to teach them leadership skills so that later on they will be able to take over and run the program for the next generation. Hopefully, this place will allow me to apply what I know in psychology and counseling to work with them. What I’m really hoping to get out of the internships is a clearer understanding of the population and the environment that I would like to work with in my future careers. Hopefully, this experience will also help me to decide on going straight to graduate school or to work after graduation. |
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Michael Cao Year: Senior Major: Psychology and social behavior and sociology Hometown: Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. Summer travel: Sacramento, through UC Sacramento Internship Program with internships at the Sacramento Mutual Housing Association and the Asian Pacific Community Counseling Center Travelogue entries #1Pursuing social work in politico city (06.30.05) #2Touring ’Frisco (07.04.05) #3 Learning on the job (07.13.05) #4 Taking lessons from Sacramento’s young people (08.03.05) #5 Working with Sacramento’s ‘Weed and Seed’ Program (08.22.05)
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