Fundraising, take 2!

As many of you may already know, I will be serving ANOTHER year as a Young Adult Volunteer beginning this September. This time, I will be living and working in Hollywood. Yes, Hollywood, California. Believe it or not, Hollywood has its own problems with poverty and homelessness. The Hollywood YAV program has three components, which I will explain in this blog entry: living in intentional Christian community with the other Hollywood YAVs, working 32 hours per week for a local non-profit addressing homelessness, and serving as a “good neighbor” to the surrounding area.

The prospect of living in intentional Christian community with other mission-minded Christians is what originally interested me in serving as Young Adult Volunteer for a second year at a national YAV site. The four other Hollywood Young Adult Volunteers and I will struggle with the issue extreme poverty in the shadow of extreme wealth, which is prevalent throughout Hollywood. The five of us will agree on a covenant governing the way in which we want to live together during the year. There will be an emphasis on living simply and intentionally -- “the way Christ intended.” This will probably mean only walking, riding bikes or taking public transportation to work, limiting or completely restricting time spent watching TV or using the internet, committing ourselves to making responsible consumer choices as we share grocery, utility bills etc. We will also have regular times of community building, prayer, reflection and bible study between the five of us each week.

Additionally, we will commit ourselves to being good neighbors in our neighborhood. The house is located in a small, working class, predominantly Spanish-speaking immigrant neighborhood. As a house/group, the five of us must brainstorm some sort of service that we can provide to the neighborhood. In the past, Hollywood YAVs have hosted regular community meals, provided after-school tutoring and organized holiday festivals/parties as well as regular pick-up games of soccer/basketball.

Finally, I will be working as a “street outreach case manager intern” for an organization called PATH (People Assisting The Homeless) I am very excited about this opportunity. Although I have done a little volunteer work with the homeless before, this will overall be a very new, different experience for me. I’m still learning many of the details, but basically I will be working in a team of case managers who will work on the streets on a daily basis with homeless clients. Through conversations, we will attempt to help people living on the streets assess how they can best take steps towards self-sufficiency and search for affordable housing.

As you can tell, it promises to be a year full of personal and spiritual growth. The final part is the fundraising. As part of the YAV program, I have committed to raising $6,500 to help cover living expenses and program costs. I need your help with this fundraising! The YAV program in Hollywood is actually run in partnership between the Presbyterian Church (USA) and a program of the Mennonite Church called DOOR (Discovering Opportunities for Outreach and Reflection). So if you are willing and able to help me with my fundraising efforts (no amount is too small), there are three ways you can do that.

The best way is to write a check to “DOOR Network” and write “Hollywood - Alex Cornell” in the memo line. Mail the check to

DOOR National Office

430 West 9th Avenue

Denver, CO 80204

If you would rather give through the Presbyterian Church (USA), you may do that as well (however, they do prefer that you give directly through DOOR). To give through the PC(USA), click here. Then click “Hollywood” in the box that says "Support specific national YAV sites" and then follow the instructions. In the “Comment” section of the online form, be sure to write that the funds are designated for Alex Cornell.

Finally, you can also give through the DOOR facebook "cause" page by going here and clicking “Donate.”

Thanks and be sure to keep in touch!

Back in USA

Once again I've gone too long without updating. I've started writing a couple entries, but they have yet to be finished. I'm back in the States having finished my term of service in Peru (I flew home July 28). I recently got a new laptop computer, which in the future might make me a better blogger, because I can just take it out and start writing the moment I feel inspired (like now).

Thus far, being back in the States has been weirdly normal. I felt like I heard about or was dreading "reverse culture shock" or "re-entry shock" for 3 or 4 months before leaving Peru. I was feeling ready to be totally disgusted with American culture and to feel out of touch or alienated by my friends and family. So far that's not the case. Over the past few weeks, I've been relatively busy traveling to see friends and family from home in Atlanta, my college in San Antonio, TX and my job over the summers during college in Montreat, NC. In each of those places, I've had many more good/positive experiences than bad. At times I certainly miss my host family, fellow YAVs and my brothers and sisters from the churches in Lima, but overall I am happy to be "home."

As I've mentioned before on my blog, at the beginning of September I will start another year of serving as a Young Adult Volunteer. I will be working for a homelessness agency and living in a shared house in intentional Christian community with four other Young Adult Volunteers in a small, working class Mexican immigrant neighborhood in Hollywood, California. Ironically enough, I feel like THAT is where I may experience the most "culture shock." For the past year, I lived a modest middle class lifestyle (by Peruvian standards) among fairly "mainstream" evangelical Christians. During the week-long YAV orientation and at the beginning of my time in Hollywood, I will be living an upper-middle class white person's version of a working class lifestyle among liberal/postmodern "evangelical" Christians ("evangelical" in the "let's take back this term" sense). In Peru, I feared being judged if I went out to a dance club or suggested that women could be leaders in church. In the US, I fear being judged if I use a gender-specific pronoun to talk about God or throw a plastic bottle in the trash can when there's a recycling bin right next to it. I've spent a year around people worried about making sure their families well-fed, healthy, happy and successful as opposed to being around people for whom those things are a given, so they're instead worried about fighting injustice and liberating the oppressed.

When it comes down to it I'm still squarely in the liberal/postmodern Christian/simple lifestyle camp. The difference is now I'm a little more self-aware and a little less arrogant than I once was about it. Thanks for reading, and I'll try and keep updating as I continue to wrestle with all of the theological/cultural tensions that have emerged for me over the past year.