Still in The Right Profession

Posted on Thursday October 27, 2011 by Jacob Campbell.

Job Well Done

As my avid blog readers (I think with all the time my site was down, there are probably none… LOL) probably already know I love NPR. I’m always listening to it in the car all day (unless I’m bumping some Drake). Last night as I was getting off work, late as normal, and driving home. NPR had a really amazing story on. It was Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families. It was very informative and powerful. I think I teared up a little bit.As I was driving home, and being impacted by this powerful story, it reminded me of what one of my professors told us one time. We were watching some pretty upsetting videos, and she (Mary Ann Clute) told us the day that hearing some of these stories no longer effect us is the day we should change professions. I guess listening to to this story makes me realize that I really am still in the right profession.That’s a great big “Job Well Done” to me.

If your curious about what the percentage of Native American Children are in the foster care system in your state, check out the map below or Disproportionality Rates of Native American Children In Foster Care.

It Starts Again

Posted on Thursday September 29, 2011 by Jacob Campbell.

I have been been doing graphic and web design stuff for the last several years. It all started with an original blogspot website . My friends all started posting blogs and I created my own. Later I learned that I wanted to change how the blog looked and felt. I started teaching myself a little bit both doing some of my own graphical design and webdesign. After a while, I figured I wanted greater control and to create my own website. I used some free space from my ISP. I out grew that, and decided I wanted greater control over my site and the ability to employ PHP. I purchased my own web hosting and domain name. I built a pretty extensive website using WordPress as my blog software and creating static PHP pages with different functioning. After going through my entire website and having to update a few things a couple of times, I decided it was time to use a CMS. I started using Drupal as a CMS. I spent a lot of time, and had placed all of my static pages onto Drupal’s system and designed it how I liked it. I started to learn to change some basic structural components of the system to the way I liked it. Then Drupal upgraded to a complete new version. Since I am always looking for the newest greatest thing, I upgraded my site. I lost all of my data as it was structured in the process. I have all of the backup files, but I can’t just import it. I lost a couple of hundred pages and my blog articles. I’m especially sad, because I had recorded many of my travels through Europe and South America. I’m hoping to make this site better then it was before and with more enhancements. My website was down for a long time, and now I’m starting fresh… I won’t lie. It will probably take me quite a while to get back to where I was before, but I will work on it. I hope you enjoy what you find and I always appreciate comments.

*[ISP]: Internet Service Provider

Business… Life, Work, and Organizations

Posted on Saturday January 15, 2011 by Jacob Campbell.

Life has been busy lately, and I haven’t posted anything for a while. Most of my time has been taken up by working. I’m working as a Mental Health Case Manager at Nueva Esperanza a part of Tri-Cities Community Health. I have been really loving it. I’ve gotten lots of cool opportunities working there, and am learning a lot.

I’ve still been working at Safe Harbor. Next month, I will be starting to lead a group for pre-teens / teens. I’m pretty excited about it.

I also got to go to the social night out for Young Professionals of the Tri-Cities. It was nice to meet so many people of different organizations. I really enjoyed it.

I’m hoping to have some changes come to my website here in the near future.

2010 Beggars Banquet Excitement

Posted on Saturday November 20, 2010 by Jacob Campbell.

On Friday, I got the opportunity to go to Safe Harbor’s annual Beggars Banquet. It was a really great event, and so much bigger then I’ve seen it. It had been several years since I was able to go to the last event, and it has changed drastically and really gave me some great prospective on doing some fundraising events. Years ago, when I last went they were in the Old Country Buffet, maybe had a 100 people, and made something like $5,000. A lot has changed since I’ve come back to the Tri-Cities.

This years event, and last years for that matter, took place at the Three Rivers Convention Center, a wonderful venue. The main feature of this annual event is local restaurants bring in their best soup. The event drew about 800 participants this year and a small army of volunteers. Volunteers even included Miss Tri-Cities and Miss Columbia Basin. I spent my time volunteering taking pictures of the event (although I didn’t load them on my laptop, so I’m not posting any as of yet). There was a silent auction of gift baskets and beautifully decorated Christmas trees. There was also a live auction of lots of cool items, with the hottest selling item being one of the board members preparing a five different dinners for groups of 8 people selling for I believe $500 a pop. Pretty amazing. They also had a number of drawings, raffles, and even a card game. They’ve really come up with some innovative ways of getting money, with even just a live donation time at the end. This year, before paying for all of the events costs, they came up with about $50,000, which is absolutely amazing! That’s about $20,000 more then they made the previous year.

Tri-Cities Wine Festival

Posted on Tuesday November 9, 2010 by Jacob Campbell.

The last couple of weeks have been pretty great. This last weekend was really fun. I got the opportunity to go to the 2010 Tri-Cities Wine Festival held at the Three Rivers Convention Center. It was a really fabulous event. While the entrance was generally $65.00 to attend, I was able to get in for free. Safe Harbor Crisis Nursery was invited to the event to do a coat check for donations. I was able to go and spend a little bit of time tasting some wines before starting to collect coats. It was a lot of fun. When I was walking around (by myself at first), I ended up meeting two people. One was a lady from China who had gotten her Ph.D. from WSU and a guy who was from Chile. I was really surprised to meet a couple of international persons in the Tri-Cities (I always feel like it’s such a small place). Especially the guy from Chile. We spent time talking about Pisco, and the rivalry between Peru and Chile. It was very interesting.

When I was doing the coat check it was kind of fun. I got to talk about Safe Harbor with a number of people and hear lots of people say they were familiar with our services. We even had a guy give a $100 donation into our tip jar. Pretty phenomenal.

I get to go into my orientation here tomorrow for Tri-Cities Community Health. It seems like things are getting into place.

Cool Stuff Happening

Posted on Saturday October 30, 2010 by Jacob Campbell.

This is a screen shot of the Walk Score for my mom’s house. It’s pretty interesting. It comes up with a score of 30, and being car dependent. I would have to agree.

This last week has been a really good one for me. I just got hired on at Tri-Cities Community Health (formerly Community Health Center La Clinca) as a case manager, which should be really fun. I’m not exactly sure what I’ll be doing, but I’m assuming it will be a great learning experience.

The other thing that is very cool is that I just got a car. I’ve been looking at apartments, and I came across a really interesting website (Walk Score). The website lets you enter an address and it rates how walkable that address is (i.e. closeness of stores, entertainment, public transportation… etc). It’s a really interesting concept and something which is very on my mind since coming back from Peru.

Since coming back from Peru, one thing that has been hard to get used to is how much space / how spread out everything is in the US and especially in Tri-Cities. The neighbor hood that my mom lives in is not very walkable, scoring just a 30. I can believe this. The other day, my mom asked me if I could get some bread. I ended up walking to the nearest Albertsons, it only took me about 2 hours to go there and back. I think that this idea of a walk score is also important because of it’s effect on the climate and feel of a city.

If things are more walkable in a city I believe that people are more likely to walk. It’s healthier for the people in the community. It’s healthier for the environment. And it’s healthier for the community. It would make sense that if you are walking to various locations in your community you are more likely to know / meet people who live around you. Knowing your neighbors builds community solidarity and makes it a safer place to live.

I bring this up because of my other piece of cool news. I was going to go and buy a car. I figured with the income that I would be making and spreading it out over three years (normal car payment) I could easily afford a car payment for a $10,000 car. I found some really great cars. I found a 2001 Mercedes (fully loaded) that was super sexy that was under $10,000. Pretty amazing. While I would be able to afford the loan, and it would be a really fun car to own, one of my mom’s friends offered to give me a car for FREE. So amazing. While it’s not as sexy as a Mercedes, being a 1993 Mercury Sable Wagon, it is amazing to receive it for free… such a blessing. It does have some problems with it, and I need to get it in somewhere so it can get looked at, it is a free car. It will allow me to save up some money until I can have a better down payment (or pay cash) for a new car. The car doesn’t have AC, but during the winter that shouldn’t be a problem so maybe next summer I’ll look into getting a new car. I was just so excited, that I wanted to share with everyone.

Safe Harbor Crisis Nursery Promotional Video

Posted on Friday October 29, 2010 by Jacob Campbell.

I really enjoy doing a little bit of graphic and web design, it seems like a good hobby. Sometimes it can take up just a little bit too much time, but I generally enjoy it (unless it’s one of those times that I just can’t seem to get my computer to do what I see in my head.

So, I guess more than graphic and web design now, I’ve made my first movie. Well, maybe it’s not really my first movie, but one of my first “real movie.” I’ve put together slide shows and that sort of thing a couple of times in Windows Live Movie Maker. It’s a super easy to use program, and has served my purposes well. When I was asked to create a promotional video for Safe Harbor Crisis Nursery I figured I’d play around with the untouched Adobe Premier Pro I have on my computer and see what I could do. While the video is probably about the same type of quality that I could have made with the basic windows program, it was interesting to learn a little bit about another design type.

So below is the video I created for Safe Harbor and loaded on YouTube (View video on YouTube) for your viewing pleasure. I must say the video is not the best quality, but I guess it works for my first attempt. If any of you have any helpful tips for making it better, let me know.

Creative Giving?

Posted on Monday October 11, 2010 by Jacob Campbell.

I think that creativity and ideas are everywhere for us, we just have to tap into them. It also seems that it is easy to come up with ideas about things to spend money on, when one doesn’t have any money to spend.

I went to McDonald’s tonight for a snack, kind of a long story, and spent some of the last couple of dollars I have on some McChicken Sandwiches. This got me thinking about how their only a buck. Buying two of them was sufficient for my stomach (probably not if I was super hungry…). This got me thinking about what if I just bought like 100 of them (or 50) and gave them out to homeless people (although this would probably work better in Spokane then here in the Tri-Cities).

I am a firm believer in giving. I think it is a great thing, and even though I’ve never made a lot of money working, I’ve always given. This is normally my tithe, and I’ve given to various organizations, and given lots of my time. I think it would be cool to, after I get a job probably, put into my budget a “Creative Giving” category. On my budget I generally take out 20% of my gross income. I pay myself first with 10% and tithe 10%. Then I’ve in the past had some different things that I’ve given to with some extra money.

If I could have this “Creative Giving” category, and maybe only put $50 into it every month. I would want to require that I come up with a new creative way to give away that money every month. It seems to be a really interesting idea, but probably not worth that much coming from somebody who had to gather change to pay a $2.17 late night dinner at McDonald’s, we’ll have to see if when I have an income I put my money where my mouth is.

I want to know, if someone gave you $50 and told you that you had to come up with a creative idea on how to give it away…. what would you do with it?