Here is a link to my final video reflection about my overall service learning experience:

https://youtu.be/0EZGo0rm1eQ

Here is a link for my video about one of my experiences at Dress for Success Lexington:

https://youtu.be/B7ZbSmOC1QI

Dress for Success Final Reflection

Happy Volunteers

dress for success in review

Infographic: Facts About Women in the Workplace 

Dress for Success pulled off the big cleanup for the sale event! The last time we went back to their office, the entrance area for clients was completely clear, with all of the previously haphazard clothes, shoes, hangers, and accessories neatly put away. Even their storage area was neatly organized with separate areas for different categories of clothing and accessories!

 I now feel a bit sorry about the skepticism and apprehension I expressed before. As volunteers, the group from our class and the other CIS class did a fantastic job helping this organization prepare for its spring sale, one of the biggest events it hosts each year. Through sorting through these miscellaneous items and determining which items needed to be sold and donated, we were able to aid in the streamlining process for the sale, helping to ensure the needs of customers and ridding their office and storage space of unnecessary items were the top priorities. In fact, after we inquired about how the sale fared, Analisa told us that they were able to raise nearly $3,000!!

For the rest of this visit, however, our group merely had a walk through of the process, which mainly consisted of picking out an office appropriate wardrobe for Jordan. Though I am still dismayed by the overall volunteering experience, I am happy we were able to aid, even a little bit, in helping Dress for Success carry off their sale. Though the Lexington branch of this nonprofit is rather disorganized and presently running in an inefficient manner, I truly believe in their mission and their approach to achieving their purpose: promoting the economic independence of disadvantaged women.

Dress for Success: In Reflection

TED Review: The Career Advice You Probably Didn't Get

From this TED Talk

Youtube Day

Below is one of the videos I helped publish for Dress for Success

Tales from Tech Support

On October 23rd, I visited Dress for Success again to help serve the community. I went by myself this time, and arrived at the office pretty early in the day. The last time I'd gone, the director had identified me as a "tech guy," so I expected to be put to use in something of the sort. Sure enough, upon arriving, she told me that she needed help updating the web site. I thought, "alright, I can get myself interested in this, I like this kind of stuff." But when she started showing me what she needed help with, I quickly lost that hope. This was a WordPress website that had already been formatted by Dress for Success nationals. Essentially, the website came down to an elaborate series of fill in the blanks. This could not have been a more boring task to get assigned to. I spent 4 hours there that day working on this stuff, and it was one of my more mentally draining experiences of recent memory. Let me show you some of my proud work.

Here you can see the news posts that I made. For this, I used one of my best resume special skills, copy and paste. In creating this content, I copied and pasted like never before. It's a good thing they had such a tech savvy person on hand, as who else could ctrl-c and ctrl-v with such abundant proficiency. Another thing that I renovated was the stories page.

For a long time before I helped update this, this page just sat empty, desolate, and lonely. In doing this, I again used my tech skill of copy and paste, but also another proud skill of mine, crop. This picture didn't know what hit it when I went to work on it. In the end, I spent the majority of 4 hours just working on this website, updating little bits and pieces across it, all the while no clients whatsoever came to the office. Four hours of administrative work really reinforced how much I never want to work in IT. In all seriousness, this was a rather disheartening experience. I started off being really passionate about getting to help the community, especially since I'm a business major and this charity interacts heavily with the business world. But ending up doing the kind of work that would be delegated to an unpaid intern, I just felt wasted. I know that I have skills I can use to make a difference, but I was never going to be able to put those to use at Dress for Success.

TED Talk Analysis: Michael Kimmel on Gender Equality

I thoroughly enjoyed this speech and Kimmel's argument that gender equality is beneficial for all, including men. His inclusion of the intersectionality of race and feminism aligned with my views on the issue, and even helped me to be proud of my views on the subject. In particular, Kimmel's anecdote about the white woman saying she sees a woman in the mirror while the black woman sees a black woman in the mirror resonated with me. As an Indian-American woman who grew up in the south, I think about my own race and the way others perceive me because of it virtually 24-7.

Even though Kimmel understands the relation between the oppression of minorities and women, many others have yet to see the light. Too often, individuals are bogged down with understanding the fight for equality in only the spheres that directly affect their own lives. On the opposite side of this issue, many people in positions of 'privilege' feel attacked and belittled when discussing the issues historically oppressed populations face in the modern world. Viewpoints like Kimmel's can provide much needed change and add to the conversation regarding feminism and intersectionality in the United States and beyond.

                                          Intersectional feminism is inclusive feminism.

Kimmel's speech was generally well-presented, with all of his personal anecdotes and observations serving as support for his main argument. His knowledge and clear passion for the subject added to his credibility and appeal, as evidenced by the obvious approval from his audience and the standing ovation he received. The way he presented the end of his speech, however, left me with a somewhat dry taste in my mouth (for lack of a better phrase for describing how it made me feel). The fact that he needed to justify that equality for men and women will improve the lives of men for gender equality to be deemed desirable by them was a disheartening reflection of the society we live in today. Shouldn't equality be desired by all? Shouldn't those with inherent institutional privilege rather than capitalizing on their positions, champion the rights of oppressed populations? Even though this part of the speech was demoralizing, we need to keep in mind that the fight against oppression is being taken on by more and more people every day. In addition, more individuals of historically oppressed backgrounds are able to live happy, healthy lives according to their own standards and desires than ever before. I leave you all with this quote by Michael Kimmel: "...we cannot fully empower women and girls unless we engage boys and men." Only through a united front and the cooperation of all can we abolish systemic oppression of women and girls.

infographic

TED talk by Louann Brizendine

The TED talk that I watched and analyzed was one given by Louann Brizendine at Berkley about the differences between male and female brains. Louann Brizendine is well known for her progress and work in studying the differences between males and females. Her main interest in this study is the differences between the male and female brain, and also how gay and transgender brains differ from the male and female brains.

In her speech, Louann Brizendine gives information about how the male and female brains are developed differently starting at conception; in the male child, the brain goes through what she calls a testosterone margination process which allows some parts of the brain and others to shrink so that it differs from the female brain. At a glance, the male and female brains look the same; however, there are small variations in sizes and pathways that cause the inherent differences between boys and girls.

Her information was delivered really well and I was able to follow along with the scientific information because she made it relatable and understandable. She was also able to bring in some great humor that lightened the mood and made everyone want to listen to information that could actually be really easy to tune out. Over all, the speech was informative and helped me understand a lot about why certain things work differently between males and females.

Excelling at Excel

When I first signed up to volunteer at Dress for Success I was under the impression that I would be working with underprivileged women to change the way their life was going. I thought I was going to be changing these women’s lives. I was very wrong. Over the 10 hours that I spent at Dress for Success I never once spent any time with the women the organization was helping. Instead I was sorting the mess of a stock room they had, or updating their filing system. I spent over half of my time updating excel documents and re-filing the profiles of the women that I was not actually helping, and I know that I was not the only volunteer being wasted in this way. I think only one of the volunteers from this class actually helped a real person. While I do admit that my schedule didn’t lend itself well to helping people since I often had to come in after the times when any of the clients were there, there was one opportunity for me to interact with a client that I was denied.

The last the last time I went to volunteer there was a woman going through the suiting process where she gets to try on suits that Dress for Success gives her for interviews. I walked in while they were just getting started but instead of letting me help or even sit in on the process I was delegated to working on excel documents yet again. The explanation that Alton and I were given was that the woman had her child and was intermittently on her phone so it wasn’t a good situation for us to help with. Even when Alton offered to help with the little boy to try and make it easier to get through the suiting he was denied, so instead of being allowed to help with the only client I had even seen, I sat at the computer for two hours updating the files; again. That is definitely not what I was expecting from my volunteer experience.

I think it really came down to the fact that Dress for Success Lexington is only 2 years old and they are still extremely unorganized. They don’t really seem to have their act together enough for volunteers to do anything besides simple clerical work. As a whole it seemed as if they were drowning in the responsibilities of running an organization. They even had trouble simply setting up times for us volunteers to come in and help. There were a lot unanswered emails and a general lack of organization concerning the volunteer process. I am actually pretty upset that the experience didn't exactly turn out how I was expecting it to. I was originally excited to experience the work this organization was doing for these women and I left the organization without a hint of what really goes on throughout the whole process. I would not say yes to Dress for Success.

Men Are the New Ball-And-Chain

For my TED talk I watched Hanna Rosin’s presentation on the rise of women in the work force in the past few years. She had some pretty surprising statistics on how women are actually surpassing men in graduation rate as well as the work force. According to Hanna women currently make up more of the job market than men and it is not just in menial jobs. Women are starting to become the majority in a lot of fields. Women are more likely to be managers, and this shift is present in other high powered jobs, which came as a shock to me. I was still under the impression that there were more men in most fields and I think that is because I grew up being taught that the men are the “bread winners,” men “bring home the bacon,” and that women are meant to stay at home with the kids, and I think most of society is still under that impression. I think that while the power dynamic in the working world is starting to shift, it is going to take a while for society to recognize that a sense of equality in terms of the number of women working is the norm. Hanna mentioned that college girls now are starting to think of being a working mother as the expected outcome of their life, which I definitely relate to. I was always under the impression that my life would take a path leading me to a strong career. I’m interested to see how the future generations of women tend. It could be a pendulum and we are in the middle of the swing towards a female majority before shifting back or this trend may continue until stay-at-home dads are the new norm.

                Relating this talk back to Dress for Success is actually pretty interesting. With this whole idea of women surpassing men in the work force the organization’s goal doesn’t quite seem to fit the statistics. However, Hanna mentioned that the middle class is disappearing for men and women and Dress for Success works with the women that are in that lower class. With this whole swing to an era where women are often the “bread winners,” especially after the recession, it will be interesting to see how that lower class will be affected by work done by Dress for Success and similar organizations. With so much support for women who are in a situation where a low class job is needed, along with increasing competition for the low class jobs between men and women, it might lead to a similar shift towards a women run work force that the upper class jobs are experiencing. I think Dress for Success’ goal to have a world with women being financially independent is very attainable and likely with the way the statistics are looking.

The actually presentation part of the talk done by Hanna was pretty good. She sounded like she really understood her information and was very relaxed. The conversational part of speaking that we learned was so important was definitely present. Although, one fault I would say she had was a tendency to look back at the screen pretty often. Her presentation also seemed very geared towards women, and it seemed like most of the audience was women, but this being online it might have been better for her to make it a little more male friendly. She also started talking about the glass ceiling in her conclusion, which I don’t think fit too well since nothing about it had been mentioned in the entire rest of the speech. Her conclusion also again seemed like it was a little targeted towards women. But besides that the talk was very interesting and I would suggest it to others.

http://www.singleblackmale.org/2012/03/12/women-are-right-men-are-the-new-ball-and-chain/

  

The Struggle Bus is Real

Being from the suburbs of Chicago I became very familiar with public transportation at an early age. The idea that I would have to catch the bus to get to Dress for Success to volunteer wasn’t all that concerning, however, Lexington’s bus system has got to be one of the least enjoyable parts of my volunteer experience and made the service learning project a bit of a hassle. The first time I attempted to use the bus system to get to my organization the whole experience went well. The bus was only about 10 minutes late and we made the transfer with time to spare. We ended up at Dress for Success right on time. This bright start gave me so much hope for the future.

The struggle began the next time I made the trek to volunteer. With my impossible schedule, the early hours of the morning was one of the only times I could make time to volunteer. So after many frustrating emails trying to find a good time I finally scheduled a visit at 8 AM. I arrived at the bus stop promptly at 7:06 AM when the bus was supposed to arrive. Naturally it wouldn’t be on time and I wasn’t expecting it to be. No public transportation is. However, I was not planning on the bus being about 15 minutes late making me miss the transfer and effectively making it impossible to get to Dress for Success and spend more than about half an hour before having to get back on the bus to get to class. After missing this transfer a couple of times it became clear it would be more effective to power walk to the transit center to catch my transfer and make it to the organization on time. To put it simply, those 20 minutes became my workout for the day. It was not an enjoyable experience and definitely one I’m not going to miss.

With the hassle of trying to get to and from volunteering without a car I don’t think I would volunteer if it wasn’t mandatory. The fact that I had to use a tricky public transportation system to get to and from my organization really took away from my enjoyment of the service learning project. It almost seemed like a waste to spend about 40 minutes both ways to only have time to spend at most 2 hours volunteering, especially when the organization is only about 3 miles and a 9 minute drive away. I think this whole project would be a lot more enjoyable if it wasn’t so challenging to try and schedule a good time to come that fits my schedule and then try and get there without a car. 

Eager to Change Lives

I never volunteered a day in my life before this class. I could say that it was because I had no time in high school or because my family was never big on service, but if I’m being honest the main reason I never volunteered was because I never found an organization I felt connected to enough to spend my time working for, especially when I had a limited amount of free time to begin with. With that being said, I am glad that this class is forcing me into a new experience.

 When I first took a look at my choices of organizations I became fairly uninterested in the project, however, my initial research into Dress for Success rekindled my interest pretty fast. This organization finally caught my attention and made me eager to spend my time helping. Dress for Success is a worldwide organization with the goal of giving women the tools to become economically independent.  Their vision for the world is one without women living in poverty where women spend their time shaping their communities. I was intrigued with their vision almost immediately, not because I have particularly strong opinions on poverty and equality, but because I grew up in an area where women being successful parts of the working world were extremely common. This included my mom, so successful working women was a very common part of my entire life. I was interested to see a side of the world I was unfamiliar with and eager to get started.

Dress for Success made it pretty easy to get a feel for the organization before I even stepped in the door. They have a very organized well formatted website, which made it easy to understand their goals and vision. There was also no shortage of empowering inspiring stories of the women that make it through the system and achieve their goals of success. I’d be lying if I said the website didn’t spark my initial interest in the organization. Whoever made that website is well on par with the creators of those tear jerking animal abuse commercials. This fist look at the organization made me hopeful for the future of this project. I was sure I was going to be changing lives!

From the DFS Facebook page

Dressing and Stressing

I've always seen myself as the kind of person to carry out plenty of charitable activity later in my career, and my experience at Dress for Success has certainly helped me narrow down how I want to do this; I do not want to spend my time at a place like this, but rather in creating my own opportunities. Dress for Success does a fair amount of good for the community, but is extremely inefficient in doing so. The return (of good) on investment (of time and effort) is extremely low, because of the terrible bureaucracy of this institution. I recently spent four hours as a volunteer at Dress for Success, and ended up using that time to just update the website and occasionally accept some donations. This was the case because, as I found out, on most days they don't see any clients. That applies to a lot of days at Dress for Success actually, where the focus seems more primarily to be on making public appearances and getting ready for their sale of many of the clothes that are donated.

Fayette Country, outlined, is a fairly poor part of Kentucky

I think that the drive and passion of the people involved in this organization are in the right place, but they've created a system that prevents them from doing the good that they set out to. Dress for Success only helps people that are referred to them through other community outreach organizations in the region, which has appeared to me to be a very inefficient way of finding those in need. The Lexington location of Dress for Success is in a very poor part of the city. Coming and going from service, I see lots of people that are clearly part of the disadvantaged populus that the organization has set out to help in the first place. I'm sure they have reasons for doing things the way they do, but it's hard to bring justification to seeing all sorts of good resources just going unused for so much of the time.

Dress for Success - Overview

Dress for Success was founded in 1995 by Nancy Lublin shortly after she graduated from Brown University. The primary objective of this organization is providing disadvantaged women with employment assistance services and workplace-appropriate clothing, and they've done this in nearly 150 cities in 20 countries. So far they've worked with over 850,000 women. I think that this is a fantastic organization because there is a distinct double standard in the way that men and women are expected to dress for the workplace. It's very easy to be a man and simply interchange pieces in the shirt + tie + dress pants equation, but for women, there is no such simple equation. Workplace-appropriate attire can range between all sorts of different styles at varying degrees of formality. Dress for Success does a great job of helping to level the playing field that begins as a very slanted one when it comes to entry-level positions in the business environment. The organization currently relies on donations for clothing, and receives its clients via referrals from other community outreach organizations.

In social media, Dress for Success goes out of its way to associate itself with other successful women, seemingly as a way to encourage donations, associating its services facilitating success with women who have had a great deal of it. This is admirable if it helps lead to more donations, but it really is a shame that none of their social media outlets focus on the people they help. Their Instagram account has some mentions of people that have benefited from the organization, but this seems fairly low considering the number of 850,000+ women that they say they've worked with on their website, and the amazing places that they work. Dress for Success is involved all over the world, including places like Nigeria, Burundi, Jamaica, and India.

Dress For Success Video Post

Final Video Reflection on Dress for Success Lexington

Here is the link to my Video Reflection of Dress for Success: https://youtu.be/RUA2Rb8RSKU

Analysis of "The Skill of Self--Confidence"

I watched “The Skill of Self-Confidence” by Dr. Ivan Joseph. I initially chose to watch this presentation over others because of the one key word in the title: confidence. One of Dress for Success Worldwide’s main goals is to instill confidence in the women with whom they work with. This goal, however, is not being reached at Dress for Success Lexington. Analisa mentioned several times that when a women who previously has worn hand-me-down, ratty, torn, or dirty clothing, a well-fit suit can give them the confidence boost they need to believe in themselves and their abilities. She also told us that confidence plays an essential role when looking for a job. On the other hand, it does not seem like Analisa nor Sue build up their client’s self-confidence outside of giving them new clothing. I think Analisa and Sue can learn a lot from this TED Talk.

After I watched this speech, I realized Dr. Joseph reiterated how important self-confidence truly is. He began his TED Talk by telling a story of when he was a soccer coach. He explains that parents used to ask what he was looking for in prospective athletes, and he would ask what the players do really well. The parents assumed he wanted them to delve into the specific soccer skills the players had, but he reassured them that that was not what he was looking for. Dr. Ivan Joseph clarified that self-confidence is the most important thing a player, or anyone, can have. Joseph then defined how he personally defines self-confidence. He said it is the belief in yourself to accomplish any task no matter the odds, no matter the difficulty, and no matter the adversity. He went on to say that he intentionally called self-confidence a skill because he believes it can be trained. I think this definition is very similar to what Dress for Success should have as well. Many of the clients of this organization have endured unimaginable hardships. Nonetheless, with a little bit of help, through training and education, it is a reachable skill to obtain. I have witnessed both Analisa and Sue talking poorly about some of their clients and I think they should be the ones advocating for them. DFS may believe self-confidence is what makes the difference between reaching success and failing, but they need to do more to actually implement this.

Dr. Joseph then went on to tell various different stories, but there were two common themes present. The first was that if you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will. He used Mohammed Ali as an example. Mohammed Ali used to say to himself “I am the greatest, there is no one better than me.”

 

This is important because even one of the best boxers in the world needed to reassure himself every once in a while that he is great. Dr. Joseph says that if he believed he was the greatest, then he was the greatest in his mind and that is what is important; it is all about perception. I think this is also very relatable to what DFS should tell their clients. Many of their clients are not able to tell themselves how great they truly are before they walk in the door, however, with the help from the volunteers, Sue, and Analisa, they should be able to after they walk out.

The second theme of his stories is aimed at the teachers and educators, so in the case Analisa and Sue. Dr. Joseph says it is more beneficial to look at and praise the good, rather than focusing and emphasizing the bad. I believe this is an important lesson for Sue and Analisa to learn. Sue once told me that a client walked in and had a mustard stain on her shirt. Sue publicly confronted the woman and told her how atrocious it was of her to go out in public with a stain. Instead, she should have told a different client how professional she looked in her clean clothing. This way, she would have boosting the second client’s self-confidence without being a detriment to the first client. The employees of Dress for Success Lexington can really learn a lot and really help their clients if they begin to implement the strategies that Dr. Ivan Joseph discussed in his TED Talk. Here is the link to the TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-HYZv6HzAs

Blue rain jacket with the white script monogram

On a cold, rainy day, I do what all college students do, I throw my pillow at my alarm and then glare at my roommate who made the poor decision to wake up in a good mood. However, what I’m really getting at is that after I’m done crying, I throw on some boots and my rain jacket. My rain jacket came from my best friend’s aunt who owns her owns store and sells hundreds of these same jackets for a pretty penny. My jacket was given to me as a present after I graduated from a beautiful school that gave me 13 years of private, Christian education. I wear my jacket to my jobs that I wake for granted, to my friend’s homes in the fancy neighborhoods, to my home filled with a family that supports me more than I deserve.

Today I learned that my jacket is not the only one of its kind. Charmayne has the same jacket. Her rain jacket is blue with the script monogram just like mine. But, unlike me, Charmayne doesn’t have unnecessarily expensive clothes on underneath her jacket- she wears sweatpants and a t-shirt. Unlike me, Charmayne doesn’t wear her jacket to her job- she wears it to the main office where she has been searching for a job for months.

I walked into the office and was greeted by Charmayne’s wonderful smile and a cheerful inquiry about how my life has been since she’d seen me last. I haven’t been able to work with Charmayne at all, but occasionally whenever we go in she is there trying to complete a job application for one of the many jobs she has applied to. Today she was thrilled about the fact that we were wearing the same jacket; she asked questions about where I got it and continuously mentioned how cool it was that we were matching. She told me about how she had saved up for it and found a little boutique that would make it a little cheaper for her. I’ve never felt as completely idiotic as I did sitting there in that moment, I realized just how fantastic my life is compared to what it could be. Here are 2 people in basically the same outfit, leading terribly different lives, one appreciating every opportunity she has, and the other taking everything for granted without a second thought. I’ve never struggled with finding a job and most of the time I take mine for granted. My family has everything we could ever really ask for and more; I have everything I need and I rarely take a second to stop and appreciate it.  

I don’t know Charmayne, I don’t know what her life has been like or what it will be like in the future. I don’t know where she lives or if she has family to live with; she never mentioned herself or her life in our conversations, the focus is always on the person she is talking to. Though I know absolutely nothing about her, and I’ll probably never see her again, Charmayne is what made Dress for Success worth it. That moment where I recognized just how blessed I am made all the filing and sorting worth it.

Becoming a filing pro

The filing process at Dress for Success went swimmingly today. After many days of volunteering, Nikki, Jordan, and myself are now pros at Analisa’s nonsensical filing process that I have a terrible suspicion she came up with about ten minutes ago. With Analisa’s help I have begun to recognize the true importance of organization- she lacks it something awful and I can now see the dire need for it. If one accepts the help of a group of young volunteers, one should have actual things for those volunteers to do other than busy work. I mean honestly, all day all I do is busy work, and the last thing that I want to do is continue the vicious cycle of busy work at my volunteer organization of choice. At this point in our volunteering process I’m getting bored with the surprised look on her face whenever we show up at the front door. At first her absentmindedness was kind of fun and not a problem, now it’s annoying and getting in the way of my whole-hearted volunteering. Basically so far we have nothing to show for our weeks of volunteering; we’ve met no clients and done nothing outside of filing and sorting clothes. Don’t get me wrong, I realize that us sorting clothes is probably a big help, but it’s still really annoying that this is all we’re doing every single time we come in. I mean, as much as I love sitting amongst piles of donated shoes and tattered dress pants, I would’ve loved to work with actual humans much more. High class goodwill is fun but human interaction is probably more fun.

What I thought I'd be doing with Dress for Success

Dress for Success was my first choice for the service learning organization project, and something that appealed to me from the very beginning. After reading the description of the organization, I was thrilled that I had an opportunity to volunteer at a place with such an outstanding focus and interest in women. My interest in the subject of equal job rights and opportunities for women added to my interest in this organization. This whole experience was going to so great and empowering; meeting women who were working their way from the bottom was going to put everything into perspective.

I had no idea what exactly we would be doing during our time volunteering, but I for sure thought that it would maybe have something to do with helping clients. I figured we would at least be able to meet clients.

I assumed that my group would be meeting with all sorts of women with all sorts of backgrounds. I assumed I would learn about the processes of helping a person help themselves out of poverty. I assumed I would hear stories and advice. I assumed I would at least of some contact with the people using the resources of the organization.

Don’t ever assume.

Experiencing Dress for Success through the Eyes of a Client

What affects your success in the workplace?

After volunteering for Dress for Success Lexington and talking to Analisa and Sue, I realized how important they thought appearance is in relation to whether or not the person gets the desired job. I wasn’t exactly sure if I believed in what they were preaching, so I decided to make that the main focus of my paper. When performing research in regards to what employers deem as important and essential qualities that they look for in future employer prospects, I found a lot of interesting statistics. Nonetheless, it seemed as though nearly every study reported high percentages of importance that interviewers put on the interviewees’ appearance. I strategically chose these seven to include in my infographic. I decided to include height, tone, and attractiveness because those are qualities one is born with, hair color, make-up, and clothing and grooming choice because those are intentional decisions that can be altered, and weight because it falls somewhere in the middle of those two categories. Although they are not all considered in the same category, they are all influential to the interviewer. This shows that all aspects of appearance, whether you can control them or not, play a role of how others perceive you, which initially shocked me. These statistics also show that Analisa and Sue do know what they are talking about to a certain extent, which was also extremely surprising.

Dress for Success: Organization (or lack thereof)

      Paige, Jordan, and I arrived at Dress for Success on Tuesday, October 13th at about 2:30 pm. This volunteering session was largely uneventful, with few tasks having been carried to completion. After we arrived, we signed in and Analisa Wagoner (the organization director/volunteer coordinator) showed us areas around the office space in which organization or rearrangement was needed. All three of us were assigned various seemingly unimportant tasks; Jordan and I made new nametags (although I had made them before, they had apparently been lost in the hopeless abyss that is Dress for Success's paperwork) for all volunteers, and Paige was told to sort some of the haphazard clothing. After some time, Analisa stopped us midway and explained that this branch of the organization was running out of storage space and struggling to keep up with the immense amount of incoming donations. She proceeded to take us to Dress for Success's storage space, an area of similar size next door to the Dress for Success office space.
      After Analisa ushered us into the storage space, I paused and took a look around and was sincerely shocked at the amount of disarray. Clothes were strewn every which way and shopping bags littered the floor, to a point where Jordan, Paige, and I had to watch our every step to ensure we weren't knocking over any precariously perched items (I did end up knocking over a couple bags). Analisa then explained how to sort the clothes into three different categories based upon the style, type, and physical condition of the clothing: sale, donate, or keep. Those clothes that were in fine condition but not suitable to be worn as business professional or business casual clothing were to be sold at the organization's sale for spring clothes. Next, the clothes that were lacking in quality were to be donated to other groups that could cheaply sell or supply to economically disadvantaged people. Finally, clothes that were of superior quality and could be used as part of a business professional or business casual outfit were kept aside for Dress for Success, to help fulfill their purpose of outfitting economically disadvantaged women in appropriate business clothing.
      Though the task of separating the clothing into these three categories seems simple, it was an exceedingly daunting task. Analisa, however, seemed disproportionately optimistic, nearly optimistic enough to make up for my own apprehension about starting this task. In my opinion, her optimism was gravely misguided: we weren't even able to start sorting during the volunteer session on that day because it took her almost 45 minutes just to explain what needed to be done. In addition, she suggested taking before and after pictures to showcase where we had started and how much we accomplished in organizing the area. I honestly don't believe there will be a significant improvement in the condition of this storage space, but I posted some before pictures below anyway. If, by some miracle, we are able to transform this area or even produce significant changes, I may post after pictures at a later date.

      

Importance of Giving Back

I strongly believe that being a volunteer is essential in becoming a well-developed human being. Some high school administrations have taken this into account and made it mandatory. I know from experience, that everyone had to dedicate a minimum of 60 hours to community service in order to graduate from my high school. This was a simple task for me seeing as though I had over 60 hours by my sophomore year, however it really bothered me that helping others in our community was something that students had to be forced to do. It bothered me even more that some students put this task off to the last minute and ended up faking their hours.

I am from Westlake, Ohio, which is a suburb of Cleveland. Being so close to the city has broadened the scope of how I looked at how privileged my family and I were. Although we live merely 14 minutes away from the inner city of Cleveland, we truly live a completely different life. There was never a time where I had to go to sleep hungry or even be worried that there wouldn’t be any presents under the Christmas tree. I first realized how truly grateful I was when my family and I went downtown to see a performance of Wicked. There were children, alone, begging for spare change in order to get something to eat. I cried and got so scared because I thought that was going to happen to me and my siblings. My father explained to me the differences between us and them. Although I couldn’t control the fact that they got the short end of the stick, it didn’t seem fair to me.

With guidance from my mom, I started becoming very involved with the homeless and disadvantaged population of Cleveland. We would serve meals at soup kitchens, donate toys and winter clothing, and other various activities. I might have just been one little girl in charge of scooping mashed potatoes or giving a few pairs of knit gloves, but I believe I made a difference. I learned more about the world from the people I met than I ever will in any history class. I gained insights to what it was like to live in poverty. These experiences also inspired me to always go beyond what was required of me. I hope one day I will be able to start my own non-profit organization to impact the lives of those less fortunate than I am.

Saying No to Dress for Success

Today was my fourth visit to Dress for Success Lexington, and nothing has improved since my first visit. Paige, Nikki, and I arrived around 2:55 pm, five minutes prior to our scheduled meeting time. We rang the doorbell and waved through the glass windows at Analisa, the volunteer coordinator. As we were waiting for her to pause what she was doing to let us in, we noticed an unmistakable look of surprise come upon her face. She awkwardly greeted us with “Oh, I wasn’t sure if you all were going to come in today or not.” We have found this to be a typical response to our arrival at the boutique seeing as though the scheduled dates and times of our “volunteering” seems to escape Analisa’s mind.

As we entered, I immediately observed that Analisa was wearing a navy skirt, a black suit jacket, and a pair of black heels. This is definitely not something someone would do on purpose, but usually this wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Nonetheless, Dress for Success promotes appropriate and presentable business attire, and mixing navy and black is definitely not setting a good example for their clients. Also, Analisa and Sue, the other Dress for Success employee, have made multiple negative remarks regarding what their clients have worn when they would come for a mock interview. Sue told us a story of a woman who came in with a yellow stain on her shirt. She explained that the woman experienced difficulty in washing her clothing because it was a far walk to the laundromat and it was very expensive. Sue went on to make a mockery of the woman saying how stains on clothing is ridiculous and embarrassing. This made me extremely upset. The ladies Analisa and Sue work with come from low income and underprivileged areas; they are clients of Dress for Success because they cannot afford appropriate business attire. These clients are in difficult situations and they are trying their best. The employees who are supposed to be “changing their lives” should not be putting them down, especially when they don’t dress perfectly every day.

A few minutes of anger had passed and I noticed that the “boutique” and “career center” were more cluttered than normal. There were random hangers, shoes, bags of unsorted donations, and various racks stuffed to the brim with clothing everywhere. The place had looked as though a tornado had passed through. While I was looking around, Analisa was trying to think of what should be done first. It became uncomfortably silent not including the sporadic murmurs coming from Analisa. Finally, she decided that she had three “important” jobs for us to complete. She had Paige go through a box of random make-up donations and sort them by product type, Nikki was told to separate usable hangers from those which needed to be donated, which is shown in the figure below, and my task was to go through and hang up a pile of clothing that had been thrown on and around a chair. In other words, we were told to pick up after them. I understand that not all volunteer work directly corresponds with working with others or doing something entertaining, but I don’t think what we have been doing is worthy volunteer work.

Saying Maybe to Dress for Success

Dress for Success Lexington was my number one choice out of the five options of service groups, and I wanted to volunteer there very badly. I was inspired by the content of their website and the heart-felt stories of women in poverty who were able to turn their lives around because of this organization. I was eager to get started volunteering at Dress for Success in hopes that I would be able to make an obvious difference in someone’s life.

My involvement began when two other members of my group, Nikki and Paige, and I went to our volunteer orientation on a Tuesday after class. We watched a promo video about all of the meaningful work Dress for Success does for their clients, as well as discussed our plan for future volunteer dates. I was ecstatic to begin, and I knew working face-to-face with underprivileged women would be very humbling.

However, my expectations of this volunteer work fell short. After having to wait multiple days for responses to emails and constantly being in a state of confusion, we found a time that would work with our various schedules. When we showed up for our first day of actual volunteering, the volunteer coordinator seemed to have forgotten that we were coming. Nonetheless, she explained that they are always in need of extra hands since they are regularly busy. I expected that meant we would have more freedom and responsibility when working with the clients; once again I was wrong. The “important” tasks at hand were cutting out our name tags, putting pictures from a folder into a PowerPoint presentation, sorting one rack of clothing in size order, and hemming one pair of pants. These tasks seemed to be busy work that were simply pushed aside in the Coordinators’ to do list since they were tedious and insignificant. I hope that this was a one-time incident, and real work will be done in our next visit to Dress for Success.

Service Learning: Dress for Success

      Dress for Success is a nonprofit organization that seeks to aid economically disadvantaged women by equipping them with professional attire and providing them with various resources, including a network of support and career development tools. Through providing these resources, Dress for Success aims to achieve its mission of helping women thrive in work and life. This organization possesses a passionate, committed network of men and women willing to share their insights and advice to women seeking employment. By way of aiding women in securing gainful employment, this organization is able to make a difference in the women’s families and surrounding communities.

      In order for a women to be served by Dress for Success Lexington, she must be referred from either a community-based social service agency or a non-profit organization. Once she is referred, an individual appointment is set up. Next, each woman is paired with a personal stylist consultant, who will choose a business suit for her interview, and she is then introduced to the Career Center. At the Career Center, she will have access to many critical tools crucial to succeeding at her job and excelling in today’s cutthroat work environment. This branch of the organization outfits women with professional attire, conducts mock interviews, allows settings for successful men and women to relay their own tips about the workforce and succeeding in the modern world to these women, and offers several other resources through a Career Center. In offering these services and others, Dress for Success Lexington is encouraging career skill development and ultimately, improving the welfare of the Lexington community, by offering opportunities for advancement to its women, and by association, to the friends, families, and surroundings of these women.