Week 4 at CrossRoads (blog 5)

So far, my internship has been going well! I have gotten to learn a great deal about the work that CrossRoads does and the way in which they are seen in the community and the way in which they work with other organizations in the community. I have been working a great deal on the creation of my high school curriculum on sexual assault education. My supervisor and I are hoping to be able to do dry run as a practice before the end of June and a pilot workshop to be presented to community members sometime in July. There are still quite a few steps that need to be done to get the materials in place before a dry run, but I can really see it coming together!
I have been really surprised by the support the police department gives to CrossRoads. Since beginning this internship, I have gained a new, and more positive, view of the police department in my county, specifically in the city of Burlington. I think it is amazing to see the way in which the police department works to help ensure the safety and comfortability of the people they see here at CrossRoads and in the community. I’ve also gotten to learn a great deal about many different services which help people when they need assistance, such as the Department of Social Services, Child and Adult Protective Services, and the Family Justice Center, as well as many more agencies. I think the work these groups are doing to make their services better and be able to have more coordination together is quite impressive. The organizations are trying to make it easier to come together and help a client rather than having to work alone as separate entities.
This past week I’ve begun the process of helping transfer notes and information in to the online system. When typing this information in I’ve been seeing more of the details and work that the advocates do with CrossRoads’ clients. Seeing these stories, I began to break down the things I thought I knew about sexual assault. A lot of what I had learned before coming to CrossRoads was focused around college students and since coming to CrossRoads I have been opened to a whole new side of sexual assault. This leads me to my highlight of the week which was getting to go through a training for adults empowering children to speak up in times of assault or harassment and to teach adults how to recognize if a child is experiencing or has experienced sexual abuse. Through this training I could put statistics to data I was already seeing through the notes I was transferring into their online system. While this training was in some ways disheartening, I was able to learn ways of knowing how to help children and adults and take steps towards reducing the amount of sexual assaults and harassments that occur and this is why it was the highlight of my week.