School on Wheels and Meals on Wheels West - Blog #15 (The Final One)

School on Wheels is a service for homeless children in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties as well as chapters in Indiana and Massachusetts. The agency strives to enhance the educational opportunities for homeless children from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Some of the services offered are one-on-one tutoring, backpacks, supplies and information on where to find schools.

The program offers a lot of flexibility for the children where tutors will meet the children where they are living, at shelters and follow their progress even if they move around. The organization was founded by Agnes Stevens, a retired school teacher.

The agency has created 9 learning rooms in shelters that serve as a quiet and controlled environment for the educational process. Each room was created at no expense due to donations and each room has furniture, computers, educational software, books and supplies. There are two more rooms in development.

There are two types of volunteers. Volunteer tutors provide academic assistance to the children, communicate with the parents and shelter as well as working with the child's teachers. The other type of volunteer is the location coordination that is a liaison between the shelter and tutors. Location coordinators do all the behind the scenes work to make sure there are volunteer tutors and that they have all the resources that they need.

The story ideas that came out of the presentation are a profile on the deceased founder, following the volunteer process and to follow the progress of a homeless child. Newspapers do long series that follow a child or a family and the series are usually extremely successful.

The agency plans to create a scholarship fund and expand into Long Beach and Orange County. This is a great organization that should be supported by anyone that believes education is fundamental to success.

The second agency report was on Meals on Wheels West, which serves Santa Monica, Malibu, Pacific Palisades and Topanaga. The program offers home-delivered hot meals to elderly people in need. I have volunteered with Meals on Wheel with my mother and it was an interesting and great experience.

All the Meals on Wheels are different organizations and the idea started during World War II, which the delivery of food. Anyone that is home-bound and cannot provide for themselves or anyone experiencing a short term or permanent illness, regardless of age.

There are not only old people in the program, the age ranges from 32- to 102-years-old. They serve the rich, middle class and poor, according to Coleen Conway.

The program can cater to the needs of the recipients but most importantly the program lets people connect with others. When spending a long day at home alone the volunteers bring joy to the recipients and they form a bond. It is not uncommon to develop friendships with people in the program.

Meals on Wheels was active in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Families that were displaced were still able to get meals and provide for many of those in need. Some of the new clients that are entering the program are veterans from Iraq that need extra help.

The possible story ideas that came from the presentation would be a look at the Iraqi soldiers that are now in the program, a feature on a family and a ride along that features a volunteer and a client.

This is the last blog for the class but it is not the end of the class. We have done 15 blogs about a variety of topics as well as agency reports. I still have to present on my agency next week. This class has solidified things I have learned in other Journalism class as well as provided helpful insight to working in a newsroom.

As a class we covered the anatomy of a city council, created this JourBlog, covered ethical and legal issues, lead writing and elections. To read more about each of these things read below.

My favorite topics to cover where the elections and the police sections. Those are two of the most common types of stories for new journalists starting out and can be easy great stories or can be nightmares. Traveling through the labyrinth of sources and quotes can be daunting but also exhilarating.

Public Affairs reporting is a capstone course for the journalism program because it takes a mature journalist to dig deeper and find these in-depth stories. Whenever I am asked why I want to be a journalist I think back to a story related to public affairs reporting, because at some point I covered something and wrote something that made a difference. I am not a journalist for money or for the byline.

The biggest value I got out of this class was the experience of being basically forced to blog. I want to learn about innovation story telling ideas for print journalists and this was a good first step. I might maintain a blog after this class is over but probably like this blog no one will really read it.

Future journalism majors in this class should spend some time out in the field covering their agency and people in the community. So many of the stories that come from the Graphic are conducted over the phone and over email. There is nothing like observing people during an interview and walking through a sources office. Do not be a desk jockey, journalists should be out in the world and always be learning.

This class complemented everything I have learned in the past few years working and studying as a journalist. I really enjoyed spending the time with my peers and everyday we laughed together in class. Luckily, there was not the typical Graphic staff members vs. other journalism majors segregation in the class. Everyone worked well together and hopefully learned something that will help to improve their craft, I know I did.

The things left to do are a portfolio that will serve as a reference guide and an in-depth article on our agency. My agency is the Santa Monica Mountain Conservancy, which is a gigantic organization and I think my article will be about the camping issue going on in Malibu. This issue has already been receiving some press but has not been tied in to the Pepperdine community yet. There are many students that go camping and would benefit from the new regulations and then there are also students living in those hills who will not want to open their backyards to anyone with a tent and a flashlight.

Thanks you for you time and energy in reading this and other blogs, and thank you to Dr. Jordan for making all of us write these things.