Row New York alumna Charlotte Rendon, a recent graduate of Binghamton University, is now working full-time at Row New York through a fellowship sponsored by the FAO Schwarz Family Foundation. Charlotte splits her work life between helping to coach our Queens middle school team and acting as our Alumni Network Coordinator. Below, Charlotte recounts her experience at a training sponsored by the Foundation.
I recently returned from an amazing trip in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania led by the FAO Schwarz Family Foundation Fellowship. This trip gave myself and fellows from New York, Philly, and Boston that are doing amazing work within separate non profit organizations the opportunity to unite, share their experiences and learn new ways to effectively communicate and maximize the work we can do.
Using tools I gathered from being on site at other nonprofits based in Philly, such as the Food Trust, and Breakthrough, I was able to bring back activities to challenge and encourage our student athletes. Breakthrough has a great interactive song called the power song where those involved are called on, quickly decide why they “have the power”, using adjectives or verbs to explain what makes them different, and finish off their turn with a funky dance move. It requires them to be spontaneous, think positively about themselves, be more social and step out of their comfort zone. On my first day back, I was already on the ball, trying it out with Middle School Coach Harlan and her squad.
The Food Trust has a HYPE initiative, which stands for Healthy You, Positive Energy. They use it to emphasis healthy behavior, and happy independent choices to be healthy. One way I have thought of implementing this is by forming groups to create healthy competition on ways to be HYPEd even away from Row New York. They can record or snap pictures of themselves having healthy snacks and drinking lots of water, stretching, or going for a run! This way the healthy habits don’t end after practice.
Outside of seeing other organizations in action, we took time to work on skills based training that we could all take back to our separate workplaces. Topics included time efficient work flow and time management, crucial conversations for successful communication, and learning to properly balance personal and professional life. These workshops were essential! They set me up with tools to return to Row New York to be as productive as possible.
