Ember Balt4

One of the things Ember is privileged to do is to help facilitate community impact projects with emerging global leaders that we know and trust. This past weekend was one such project and like each one in the past, it was a fabulous day of serving and learning about an intriguing local nonprofit, connecting with some great college students and interacting with some good old friends.

Our day was spent at Second Chance, which is a nonprofit located in Baltimore near the football stadium. Situated in a 200,000 square foot warehouse, they deconstruct buildings and homes, salvage usable materials and make those available to the public, and provide job training through that revenue. We got a tour of the facility as well as a big picture idea of how they work as well as spending a few hours assisting them in some organizing and cleanup. The Millennials I run into are always hard workers.

This was part of Serve the City Baltimore's fall service day. Ember has tapped STCB for a few opportunities in the past few years, including a few of these service days as well as helping with one of their summer hosted teams. Erin Preshoot, who you might remember from 2008Hungary, has been on staff with STCB for a few years, also splitting her time with Christian Associates.

I'm thrilled to tell you that DK, who was an Ember intern in 2013 is thriving at Towson. She is well connected with a campus ministry, involved with a local church and she brought about 30 students from Towson to join us on Saturday. You should take notice when an emerging leader has the ability to influence a crowd of more than a few people.

We met Wendy Usher four years ago this Fall when we helped with an idea at Salisbury. Since then, she's been one of the bravest people we know, as she pursued sight unseen opportunities we had suggested to her. And she did this two summers in a row. Wendy brought a team from Salisbury and of course, we did some more missional imagination while at Second Chance. Love to tell you about that later.

All the teams had dinner at my house and then we did a short decompression discussion around the topics of:
Blessed to be a blessing
Self -> Serve -> Systems
Asset based development

As always, steal what you want but let me know if you do. But let me implore you as well - if you are involved in this kind of thing, please please do some kind of debriefing or decompression. It is so vitally important that you help students process this. They can certainly talk about these kinds of things on their own, but in most situations, they need someone to initiate it and to see it be modeled. That is part of our role as guides and catalysts - once they see it, they might own it next time.

More photos here.