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Internship Reflection

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While I was doing my internship, I worked in the newly created Vocational Center. The Vocational Center was the brain child of my supervisor Cathy Zuback. The Vocational Center had been running for three months unofficially before I started my internship and I had the privilege of being there for the grand opening on June 7th, 2017. The Vocational Center exists to help residents of the mission create resumes, job search, prepare for interviews, and get the necessary identification that they need to get hired.
The Vocational Center also provides various job readiness and certification classes. We provide Serve Safe, Retail Training, and forklift training, just to name a few. Each person that goes through one of the Vocational Center classes gets a certificate that they can add to their resume. While I was interning, I helped teach The Bridge the Gap and Retail Training class. Both classes introduced me to a wide variety of people who each had their own unique problems and futures. It was an incredible oppurtunity to teach people who had experienced so much in their lives and the hope that they had for the future.
The first theme that I noticed within the City Mission is power of hope. The Washington City Mission’s slogan is “Hope for the Homeless” and it is evidence through many of the Mission’s resident (City Mission 2015). However, no one in the Washington City Mission exemplified hope more than Clinton Jones. Clinton Jones is a resident of the Mission who has had a rough life. He moved from his home in the projects of Philadelphia at age eighteen in order to leave the drug and crime filled future that was set before him. A few years ago, Clinton had two stokes that damaged his memory, emotional, and analytical functions, but luckily didn’t damage his ability to move. He was in my Retail Training class and was determined to make a better life for himself. Clinton often says that he may not be the quickest or the smartest, but he will be doing the best that he can. He has learned so much through this class and I am so proud to see how he has grown. He is currently working at the City Mission’s thrift store and plans to move out of the Mission in September into his own apartment. Another theme that was

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