Hey Everyone,

This is Robyn, one of the summer students at the Human Development Council. Adrienne and I are into our third week with HDC now and still having a great time! Due to the ongoing inclimate weather we have been having, we spend most our days couped up in the ole boardroom drinking tea and eating candy. The few sunny days that we have seen we have been able to travel around to meetings for different organizations such as The Canadian Mental Health Association, Coverdale Centre and The United Way. Also, on Thursday of last week Adrienne and I travelled the uptown area passing out pamphlets and posters titled "Surviving the Streets". These provide contact information for many services for example shelters, mental health services, legal services, clothing and food services, addiction services and many more. These pamphlets and posters were distributed all over the uptown area and hopefully will be of use to many people! I really enjoy working with this organization because they do such great work and provide a great service with their online community service database. I think Adrienne and I should spend some time this summer on really getting the public aware of this online database and that it is available to them for FREE!! I really enjoy working with a non-profit organization and it is giving me great experience for a future career. I hope to someday work in the area of addiction services so this job is helping me become familiar with the different organizations that focus on addiction and the people within those organizations. Well it's almost time to go home for the day and I guess I have said enough for now. Thanks for reading our blog and we will keep you updated as our time here at HDC flies by!


Ciao!
~Robyn~

Hellooooooooo Saint John and surrounding areas! And also to anyone else who might stumble upon our little blog, my name is Adrienne Buckland and I am working here at the HDC for 10 weeks of my summer along with Robyn and Kasia in our little boardroom. Robyn and I are working under Anne Driscoll updating the community services database, and Kasia is spending her time doing a research project on child poverty under Randy Hatfield, the HDC executive director. The first week here went really well. I already feel completely comfortable with all my co-workers and I can eat all the candy and drink all the tea I want. It's probably a good thing that I have to walk up 4 flights of stairs everyday to reach our office because all I see when I walk through the market is cheesecake and fudge and pasta...but on to more important things: Many of you are probably wondering what exactly we've been doing here. Last week Robyn and I learned all about the community services database and why it is such an important feature to have within our community. So many people in our community are in need of various services, and many do not know how to go about finding them. Whether you are looking for a seniors group, divorce counselling or a soccer club, our goal is to make all that information easily accessible throughout the community. Along with working on the database, we also had the opportunity to attend a few interesting functions in the community. We sat in on the United Way annual meeting , attended and participated in a presentation from the Saint John Community Suicide Prevention Committee, and a meeting and tour at the Coverdale Center. The second week is now underway with the start of this sweet online blog that we'll be updating as much as we can, so please keep checking back with us!
Later!
Adrienne