Spenser Warren - Making service count!

​Hello, everyone! My name is Spenser Warren and I’m a first-year VISTA serving with the Lenawee Community Foundation and Lenawee College Access Network in Tecumseh, Michigan. We’ve had a lot happen the last couple of months. The biggest event was the change in LCAN leadership. Our former coordinator Peggy Molter retired at the end of February. We went two months without a coordinator, during which time I handled day-to-day communications with our schools. Our new coordinator, Jim Southard, started on May 1st. Jim is a former MNA VISTA (you can read his blogs here, too) who served for two years with the Lenawee Community Foundation. Earlier this month Jim and I visited Onsted High School to observe their college signing day activities. You can see a collage of students participating below.

In January I created financial aid information packets to distribute around the county. The packets included information about the Tuition Incentive Program, Fostering Future Scholarship, and FAFSA. To date I have distributed nearly 2500 packets to partnering organizations across Lenawee County. These partners are organizations that interact with low-income students daily. Many of these partners are located in Adrian, Lenawee’s county seat and largest city. Local libraries and the Boys & Girls Club of Lenawee have helped distribute to our smaller population centers around the county. The Lenawee District Library and its network of rural branch libraries has been a vital partner for county-wide distribution, expanding our reach to rural communities like Addison, Clayton, and Britton, places you have probably never heard of and never will again.

During the coordinator transition I created a new partnership with Catholic Charities of Jackson, Lenawee, and Hillsdale Counties. Catholic Charities runs a program for homeless high school seniors in Lenawee County called Roadmap to Graduation. Every Roadmap participant for the last several years has started a post-secondary program of study. However, many drop out after their first year or even their first semester. Financial and bureaucratic barriers are the two main reasons students drop out. I designed college navigation guides to be distributed to all program participants. Participants also received one of the aforementioned financial aid information packets.

​My work with the VOLUNTEER! Lenawee volunteer center and Lenawee YOUTH Council has also kept me busy. I’ve recruited volunteers for several local organizations over the last couple of months. Two are now officially certified literacy tutors and will begin tutoring for the Adrian Rea Literacy Center. I’ve also recruited volunteers to help pack weekend snack sacks for food insecure elementary and middle school students at Adrian Public Schools and Madison School District. Our youth council recently granted $25,000 to local organizations to support youth programs throughout Lenawee County. Programs range from summer arts programs in the Irish Hills (gorgeous area in northwest Lenawee) to free vaccines for low-income children in the county. We even supported a bat population study in Tecumseh for students in our county-wide animal science program and gates for a 4-H dairy program in Sand Creek (their school mascot is a cow). My supervisor and I have also been recruiting youth for our annual Lenawee Youth Leadership camp.

Jim, the new LCAN coordinator, once wrote a VISTA blog titled “Lot’s Happening in Lenawee.” That was in February 2016. Two years and three months later, I can assure you that a lot is still happening in Lenawee.