July 19, 2019

For our last day of the program we rented a meeting space and all presented our finished innovation proposals! My group pitched an idea from the perspective of a third party consultant to the Seattle Children’s Museum, creating a new program that they could implement to help support homeless single mothers in the area. We proposed a seven-week workshop series, including tutorials for Microsoft Office, LinkedIn, and resume building, with the aim of preparing these mothers for future job interviews and bolstering their marketable skills. The workshops would culminate in a networking event, inviting partners of the museum or other local businesses to come and participate, with the potential to hire some of the women who completed the training. Finally, the workshops would include a speaker from Seattle Colleges to touch on the subject of further higher education, as our research showed that education is one of the primary goals for homeless single mothers in an effort to attract more job opportunities. I felt that our presentation went very well, and I was particularly pleased that we were able to answer all of the questions people directed towards the program. After spending so many hours in group discussion, it was nice to see that our thoughtfulness actually prepared us to address people’s concerns.

Some of our other peers’ presentations also caught my attention, particularly for their simplicity in how they chose to address issues related to homelessness. The first that comes to mind was the innovation through a photo series. By simply asking homeless individuals to share the world from their perspective, and displaying those images on the outside of the library, patrons start to develop greater understand and respect for homeless patrons. This approach was completely different from our group’s—we developed a long-term, multi-stage program while this is a shorter program—but both seem effective and innovative in principle. I really liked using presentations for the last day of class because it showcased how much everyone brought to our program and wrapped up all of the themes that we have been discussing over the past few weeks by giving us a chance to apply them from our own perspectives.

After presentations, we headed to lunch and then decided to rest before our final group dinner. A few of us went to take portraits with Zack, because he wanted to do that for each of us before the program ended, but Kleitia and Jack were the first to be hit with food poisoning. By the end of our final dinner, roughly a third of the people on the program were home sick and in bed, which was a really unfortunate way to go out. I know that a few of us were planning to go out and celebrate the last day, but with all of the sickness we couldn’t really round everyone up. Nonetheless, we all said our goodbyes since we flew out at varying times over the next few days. I definitely made some really amazing friends on this trip, and I’m so glad I have another year to spend with them at UW!

Back row (from left to right): Christine, Hanna, Nolan, Carey, Scott, Megan, Magenta, Brynn, Talia, and Jack 3rd row: Michelle, Sloane, David, Zack, Brian, Kleitia, me, and Rose 2nd row: Ashley, Jennifer, Imaan, Emily, Vanessa, Kristen front row: Stephanie, Sharon, Rachel, Kenzie, and Tori