By: Kalie Date: 08/20/2015
Today our team is heading out on our annual staff retreat. All summer long we have been looking forward to the opportunity to get away together and spend some time enjoying each other’s company and strengthening our bond as a team. While many of you may know one or more of us, we thought you might like to get a glimpse into our world!
As a staff of 10, you would think it would be easy for us to stay connected. Truthfully, our staff is very tight-knit, and we consider each other to be family. Because each of us carry a large amount of responsibility here at Alpha Women’s Center of Grand Rapids (AWC), it can be difficult (and impossible sometimes!) for us to find the time to interact with each staff member on a daily basis. While we absolutely love our 17,000 square foot building, such a huge space means that we end up pretty spread out from one another. In fact, at least once per day you will see one of us wandering around looking for someone or repeatedly paging someone over the intercom in an effort to locate them.
One way we stay connected is through our morning prayer time. Each day we meet at 8:45 a.m. to start out our day in prayer together. We do our best to end this time by 9 a.m. and jump into the day, but most of the time we end up catching up with each other until 9:05… 9:10… Ok, sometimes it’s 9:15. It’s a great way to start the day! Weekly staff meetings are another time that we are able to touch base with each other. The start of our meetings is always filled with swapping stories of what’s been going on in the various departments, updates on upcoming events or needs, and of course the occasional story from our personal lives. Once again, time gets the better of us during these meetings, and Colleen has stated several times that “from now on we’ll be starting right at 1 p.m.!”
Our staff has a wonderful and diverse dynamic. We recently realized that we have a staff member from each decade from 20-70. We have night owls (Kalie has been known to send emails well after midnight) and early birds (Abigail and Cristina are always the first people in the office in the morning). Some staff members absolutely love giving and receiving hugs (Suzanne and Colleen), while others tend to avoid the hugging situations (Deb and Donna). We also have some great shoppers on staff! There are those that are always able to find the best deal (Diane is queen of thrift stores), those that find the best brands (Ruth is always wearing adorable accessories), and someone who always has the best scrubs (Lori’s flowered scrubs always brighten up a room).
It can be really difficult to work at AWC. Clients come to us with heavy stories. Recruiting enough volunteers to meet the need in our community can feel impossible at times. Running successful events and raising enough funds to keep our doors open takes a lot of work. We’re so thankful that on the hardest days our staff is always able to turn to each other for encouragement, laughter and a coffee run.
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