Icecream With The Interns – Voice Of The Township
On April 28th, Trustee Austin Knox and Deputy Dominique Dickey took our latest group of intern students for a lunchtime treat at Zesto’s on Broadway to celebrate the successful completion of their internships with the Wayne Township Trustee Office. A college’s internship program is such a valuable resource to the community for everyone involved. The students get to try out the course material they have learned in their classes, the teachers get to reinforce their in-class instruction with real-world experiences, and the agencies get to come in on the ground floor of the next generation of workers and try out some potential new staff members.
This year we were particularly impressed with the interns who came to us from Ivy Tech’s Human Services Department. There were four of them, each bringing their own unique contribution to the work we do here at the township.
Frida Cruz Guzman fit right in with our investigators and with the intake workers at the front desk. As a Spanish as well as English speaker she was especially helpful being able to translate between the languages when we needed her to. That and her calm demeanor made her a great fit for our office. She said she liked working here because she could see that everyone seemed to really enjoy working with the clients.
Ken Andrus came to us along with his service dog Lexy, whom we all wanted to spoil but, of course, that’s not something you can do with a service animal. Ken received Lexy through “Our Turn to Serve,” a non-profit organization that finds and trains dogs for veterans like Ken who have various needs and/or situations such as PTSD, etc. Ken has now become not only a recipient of a service dog; he now volunteers with OTTS, training dogs and raising money for the agency. (It costs around $10,000 to provide one dog to a service member.)
Sandra Roy is a native of Hawaii, and it was a joy hearing about her youth on the ‘Big Island.’ She has fond memories of a childhood swimming in the small inlets while her brother swam out into the ocean to ride the turtles.
Crystal Durril enjoyed her time working in our Payee Department and Intake and Investigations. She came to us already experienced in social work. She is a native of Fort Wayne and went to school at Purdue in West Lafayette. She has been involved with the “Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival” a movement begun by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. just before the untimely end of his life. Alongside that, her classes and her work with Wayne Township, Crystal started out interning with Blue Jacket, Inc. a non-profit clothing company that supports ex-offenders re-entering society where she is now employed.
Again, we would like to thank all of our interns and the program at Ivy Tech’s Human Services Department. It was great working with them, and we hope to see them all again soon.
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