Loving My HOME (inc.)

By Emily Hanna

Hello! My name is Emily Hanna and I am an enthusiastic member of the Engaged Citizen Corps (ECC) here at Drake University. As a part of the Engaged Citizen Corps I get to take service-learning specific classes and have an internship as a first-year college student! (And write this amazing blog post!)

The organization I am working for is HOME, Inc., or Home Opportunities Made Easy Incorporated. HOME, Inc. is focused around three main topics: revitalizing Des Moines neighborhoods, creating opportunities for quality affordable housing, and retaining housing through education and counseling. All in all, they help make sure people have homes, and are able to stay in them.

One of my jobs at HOME, Inc. is to create content for social media accounts. As a novice graphic designer, it is thrilling to be able to create posts and see how they look on Facebook. I created an Instagram page to attract a younger population to our resources and make sure we are consistently posting on social media. Coming this Spring, we are revamping the 15-year-old website. My job is to look through the data and make sure that all the information can be found online in a simple and effective way. 

The saying of being an intern can be true when it comes to my job once in awhile. No, I have not gone on any coffee runs yet, but I have spent a good amount of time with the copier. I find myself creating a lot of packets for our RentWise program- a series of classes for the community to learn how to be a responsible and wise renter- and building folders full of information for our new homeowners. 

As a part of my job, I get to spread the message of our mission: revitalizing, creating opportunities, educating, and counseling, and that is amazing. I have learned so much about landlord and tenant rights and responsibilities, something I would have not thought about. I have been able to rewrite brochures that help people know their legal rights through the Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which has been an experience that has opened my eyes to struggles that people face. 

A fun part of the job I was able to experience was attending a task force meeting. A variety of representatives from different nonprofits in Des Moines came together to tackle the problems released prisoners face when they re-enter society. There are multiple difficulties former convicts face, mainly employment, education, and housing. After listening to many professionals speak, I gained the sense of how vital and important housing is. Through this meeting and the work I have done at HOME, Inc. I have learned that housing is vital to a successful life. Without housing what does one have? This is a question that continues to bounce around my head as I take my law classes, and when I took an ECC course talking about dignity. 

The entire Engaged Citizen Corps program has been a blast. I would say life-changing, inspirational, eye-opening, or motivating, but they sound too cheesy. I’d say if you could google positive adjectives, every single one would be a word I would describe ECC. What I learned in my First Year Seminar (FYS) class was the definition of service-learning. Not just the google definition, because you don’t need a class to learn that. But the concept and real-life practice of service-learning. 

As a class, we would read a chapter of a book, discuss it, practice it, and then reflect on it. That, that long process is what I call service-learning. I find it so fascinating that I can go through that process to not only help others, but to make myself a better person. 

Because of this program I am a better person. And it is not just because I am now an expert copy maker, or that I accumulated 130 followers on the HOME, Inc. Instagram. But, it is because I understand what service-learning is, how to treat people with dignity, how important housing is, and how to think on both sides of an issue. 

I am so thankful for this program, for HOME Inc., and for you, who made it to the end of this blog,

Best wishes,

Emily Hanna

P.S. I would not be doing my job right if I did not publicize HOME, Inc. (Facebook and Instagram @homeincdsm)!