Tax Time

This past week was a cold one here in Wichita Falls, Texas.  We missed out on the snow that Oklahoma got, but had temperatures in the teens and some icy mornings, which kept us from doing outreach a few days.  Eventually we decided that it might be best if we did outreach anyways, but confine it to businesses and schools so that we were traveling mostly in the truck and van and just running information inside.

However, the bad weather did give us the opportunity one afternoon to meet a great member of the community and visit her youth center.  Brenda Jarrett runs the Youth Opportunities Center on the East Side of Wichita Falls.  Brenda's center is a historic building in the neighborhood and provides a space for the kids of the neighborhood to come, hang out, express themselves, and develop their talents.  On Saturdays volunteers come in and offer piano, guitar, drums, art, and boxing lessons.  Brenda has offered the youth in the area programs such as finding businesses that would allow the kids to spray paint the sides of their buildings legally, instead of vandalizing them at night.  She told us stories about how the kids that came when she first opened the center are now bringing their kids there too.  The Youth Opportunities Center seems like such a great program with so much potential, but not enough funding.  The building is a perfect space, but lacks central heating and air and major repairs need to be made to the roof and interior of her teen building, which is not usable right now.  So, we decided we would offer her information to become a potential sponsor for AmeriCorps NCCC and recommend her to the Denver Campus.  That way, she would have the opportunity to have a team and offer more programs during the week for a limited time and get some construction help potentially for the buildings.  Keep your fingers crossed for her!

Tomorrow we start our first official week of tax filing.  At least half the team will be filing taxes every day this week for employees of local businesses, and Saturday will be the first day we are open to the public.  So far, I think 2-1-1 has scheduled quite a few appointments for Saturday, and I am sure that there will be a lot of walk-ins as well.  Unfortunately I think the space only provides for 16 computers and this will still be cramped.  Hopefully it won't be too chaotic with all of us trying to ask questions at once. 

Other than that we don't have anything too special planned for the week.  My team leader and I took the challenge of being vegetarians for the week, today being day 1, and I have already decided this is not the lifestyle for me.  I was so jealous of everyone eating meat at dinner tonight, but I am pretty sure I can tough through it until next Monday.  Thursday we are going back to the roller skating rink for PT, which I could get used to doing.  It is a work out, but fun for us as a team at the same time, so no complaints there.  Hopefully I will have some inspirational tax stories for y'all by the end of the week, but we don't get another day off until Sunday so who knows when I will post again.  I am trying to do better though, bear with me!