Service begins

The end of this week has been unusually warm and sunny in Washington, so my fellow Sea Mar patient navigator and I joined the Clark County Parks and Recreation department for some good ol' environmental clean-up and community service. Early on Saturday morning we drove 20 minutes North of Vancouver to La Center Bottoms Stewardship site that protects a wetlands area full of interesting migratory birds. This effort was in conjunction with the SOLV's Beach and Riverside Clean-up initiative. SOLV is a local non-profit agency that tries to encourage local individuals, groups and businesses to go out and volunteer their time to work on restoring natural habitats and provide environmental education. It's been around since 1969 and does some pretty neat work all over Oregon and Southern Washington parks and rivers. In other words, it's everything you ever thought that living in Oregon is like.


Volunteers of all ages came out to help out with the project.

What we did on Saturday was removing plastic tree protectors that were put up a while ago around tree saplings. Some of these trees grew, and some didn't, but the many plastic tree protects were put up in order to deter beavers, deer and other animals from eating or otherwise destroying the young trees. From what I understood, when the wetlands flood due to the rain Washington gets over the winter months these plastic tree protects can potentially come out of the ground, off the trees and float out into the waterways. These fairly large pieces of plastic and debris can then harm wildlife by trapping unsuspecting birds and animals, or when they try and eat it.

So, for 2-3 hours we were out there in dewy wetlands, getting soaked all the way to our bones (I was really glad that it was actually really sunny wand warm yesterday!), removing the plastic covers as was necessary. We were handed plastic bags, knives, shovels, gloves, and told - "Go out, and find them!". For the first 30 minutes or so I had no idea what I was even looking for, and how to find these tubes. The leaders said "just listen for a crunch", but wandering in knee high "dry" (as dry as it can be in the wetlands) grass meant that everything was crunchy! So, it was an adventure for sure. In the end, I figured it out, and even got some sort of a system, because they were set a pretty regular distance apart and in a well-organized pattern.


This is what we were looking for. Can you spot the tube?



Afterward Elisa helped the other program coordinator cook up some delicious hot dogs. So we even got a free lunch!

It was a pretty cool event, and I am very glad that we got to do it. The weather was great, the work was interesting, and as fun as manual labor can be. We are on our way to building a better relationship with the AmeriCorps members that work with the Clark County Parks and Recreation, and perhaps we will do more events with them, or with SOLV in the future.

Fiestas Patrias

Translated from Spanish, "Fiestas Patrias" means "patriotic holidays" or national holidays. This weekend several Latin American countries celebrated their Independence Day.
To name a few:

September 15th - Guatemala
September 16th - Mexico
September 18-18th - Chile

So, for the last 17 years the Latino communities of Seattle have gathered to celebrate the many holidays in one huge weekend-long fiesta. Considering that SeaMar originally started out as an organization serving the Latino population of Seattle and Marysville, the local clinics have put together health fairs and parades in South Park, as well as Seattle Center. Every year that AmeriCorps has been a part of SeaMar the members got to be a part of the festivities as well. This included translating and working at the health fair, as well as various other duties, such as cheerleading during the parade, and scooping up the poop after the caballeros.

It was a great pleasure to be a part of that and see the community come together, and take interest in health screening that was available to them at various health fair locations. Even though the parade and all the festivities did not start until 11, there were families lined up along the route in preparation for the parade as early as 9:30am! Everybody wanted a good spot to see the floats and the horses, and the cars. The little kids came ready with little bags and baskets, because often the parade participants tossed candy and other small favors to the crowd. The energy of the crowd was so festive and fabulous, I really wish I could have spent more time checking everything out!

I sure hope to be able to participate more in the activities next year!

Photos are coming as soon as my internet improves!


Some traditional costumes and performers


The caballeros

No parade would be complete without some low riders.

Let's start from the beginning

Dear Friends and Family,

I've been meaning to get on this blog action for quite a while now, but never got around to doing it. So, finally, I sat down at a book store in my town of Vancouver, WA, and decided to write down some notes for y'all to peruse.

Last week, my fellow Washington Community Health Corps (AmeriCorps) members and I kicked off our 2010-2011 service year. After some ice-breakers, HR trainings, taco-truck lunches and exploring the community the 16 of us went off to our separate sites throughout the state of Washington, and throughout this organization.


I can't even begin to tell you how awesome SeaMar Community Health Centers (CHCs), and everyone who works there, truly are. Also, there are no words that can describe the amazing individuals who have chosen to work with the SeaMar AmeriCorps Program. These people have been all over the world, walked many miles, and helped many people in their young lives, and have much more ahead of them. I was really in awe of what these ladies and gentlemen have accomplished, and with what tremendous excitement and passion they were filled before the start of our year.

That was last week. The past two days my partner in crime, Elisa, and I started at our respective Vancouver sites. We met our mentors and supervisor, as well as toured the city in the afternoon. Throughout the last two days I've felt extremely welcome all throughout the organization, and very excited to start working with the actual clinic clients.

Vancouver, surprisingly to me, has a huge Russian and Ukrainian population. I hear Russian in the Starbucks, and the farmers market. Ukrainians were all over Target and Wallgreens. The clinic I am at has a Russian nurse, a Russian physician's assistant, Ukrainian community health worker in the W.I.C. department and a Ukrainian receptionist. But, with all these people being great resources and support for the Russian/Ukrainian clients, many brochures, signs and powerpoints have stupid language errors. "Service provier" (ie. doctors, nurses etc.) just doesn't translate as "поставщик услуг"(supplier of services), which makes me think of my uncle who works for a large grocery store chain in Ukraine supplying them with different perfumes and cleaning products... in other words, I've got my work cut out for me.

My projects, as far as I can imagine now will be the following:

• To some extent following up with previous AmeriCorps member's work with diabetes and smoking cessation initiatives by catching and educating patients while they wait for their medical appointments and referring them to the Health Educator and the Chronic Care Manager
  
• Bringing focus back to women's health issues, including but not limited to encouraging Well Woman checks and mammograms, and referring uninsured women to the Washington Breast, Cervical and Colon Health Program, which should cover annual preventative care examinations and screenings.
  
• Following up with the Russian-speaking refugee assistance program, and providing them with "Healthcare 101" education classes in order to introduce them to the US healthcare system, as well as walk them through the medical aspect of naturalization and green card services (yes, this is where that awful PowerPoint I tried to edit comes in)
• Walking group with our Health Educator on Wednesday mornings. Super stoked!
  
• I've also began networking with the Planned Parenthood clinic and the Maternal Health Services and W.I.C. people to see what we can do to outreach to the many many many many teens with babies that are living in Vancouver. That should be a very exciting project for me to get into. So we'll see what comes out of it.

Well, that should about sum it up for now.

I'm really getting into this work, and hope that these projects will get up and running soon. I almost wanted to start talking to patients today, but I forgot my badge, and honestly, I could probably use a little more training. I don't even know where they keep pens around that place!

So, here you guys go. Now, keep tuning in once in a while so you can, as my oh so clever blog address suggests, see Mar in SeaMar.

Love, Maryna.

P.S. Oh yes, I am so clever! I know!

Hello!

Hello dear folks,

this is just a first entry of hopefully many to come.

Just wanted to check in, and say "Howdy!"

Love. Mar.