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Stories about you

and your co-

workers.

August/September

2015

GCCAC/Casey Foundation promote the value of work

Why do people work?????????????

Physically, when she makes her appearances here

she is easily the smallest person in the building.

But no one takes Paige Teegarten as anything

but a giant of ideas and concepts.

Living in Colorado, her voice can be heard drifting down the hallways often through the wonders

of technology.

Some staffers aren’t really sure what she does, but there is no doubting her physical presence when

she does leave Colorado and comes to Maryland. She is not loud. But she radiates a presence that

can’t be ignored. This is true whether she is hosting a meeting or merely going the hallway.

It’s no wonder that among her favorite things to do when there’s time off is mountain biking. It

helps keep that incredible momentum going.

Who She Is, and

Why She Works;

Paige Teegarden

By Glenn Tolbert

Who are we and why do we come to work everyday?

In most businesses this would pose a simple question

We may be here today make widgets, motorcycle parts and maybe tires.

But how do you define the making of the caring for the welfare of 9,000 souls in a county that can draw

upon of only 30,000 workers to produce products, any products?.

Furthermore, how can you keep afloat all of those drowning souls, most of which are eager to prove their

skills. Where are folks to learn to survive in the quag-

mire of the current economy?

Caught in this emotional and often physical danger,

how are these people supposed to learn in the current

confusion and unfairness that is today’s economy? The

in term lately is “the village?”

(continued pg 2)

Index:

Why do any of us work? Read the sometimes surprising reac-

tions from your colleagues at GCCAC.

It has tie-ins with our work at GCCAC.

It’s all a part of the Two-Generation Program being spon-

sored by GCCAC and the Annie E. Casey Foundation

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Continued from pg 1

Go to the village and all will be taken care of. But how far can the village care for a person through birth, maybe grade school? And who teaches how to be a man or a woman?

It should be the elders, the parents handing down skills to their children. These parents must be capable themselves of mastering these daily arts, well enough to hand them down to their own children.

Enter a new approach: two Generation.

This multifunctional approach includes insuring family economic success. It does so by assisting with such factors as basic budgeting, financial management; career advancement; additional early childhood educa-tion and additional Mentor & support.

One of the features that makes the Two Generation program perhaps more promising than other efforts at connecting disenfranchised programs in the past, is the use of a “career coach.” Ellen Quinn has been hired and resides at Garrett County Community College where she has accepted the task of helping those seek-ing a certificate or a degree or any other type of proof further education.

This effort has the excitement of many participants. That is partly because of the level of personnel in-volved. Professionals from Garrett County Community Action Committee (GCCCAC) and from the re-nowned “rainmakers’ Casey Foundation based in Baltimore. Garett County Community Action is near and dear to us all, but the Casey foundation may not be so well known to us.

Based on funding from the late owner of UPS, the goals of the organization focus on caring for the children for the welfare for children, justice for children in danger; promotion of economic health; creating eco-nomic change and creation of mentoring and support.

The road to achievement is mapped through several journeys including coaching skills; career advance-ment; financial education; tools (education-advancement-): And dealing with crisis.

The combination of caring and of skill from both Garrett County Community Action (GCCCAC and the Annie Casey Foundation is seen to be a powerful influence in the lives of many.

For more information on the Annie Casey Foundation go to http://www.aecf.org/.

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My name is Janie Nugent and I have been employed with Garrett County Community Action for 32 ½ years. I am a Coordinator II

in the Service Coordination Division. My job is to take energy

assistance applications and to help with crisis such as housing

issues being homeless, eviction prevention, assisting with first

months rent and ½ of Security Deposits, water and electric terminations. Al-so, referrals to Christian Crossings for items that clients may need such as clothing, small appliances, etc.

I like to help people and this job is very rewarding because clients appreciate all of the assistance that we can provide to them.

The Reasons Why We Go To Work

Here’s More Reasons to Go to Work

Linda Eisenhart has been GCCAC’s IT specialist for 2 years. She started her career here as Duane’s administrative assistant in 2012, and moved into Teresa Walter’s position a year later.

As the IT specialist, Linda has been responsible for staff support with agency software, specifically CSST and IDMS. When she took over responsibilities for software, she was trained by Paige Teegarden in all aspects of the agency’s use of CSST. Linda has been updating the agency CSST documentation, creating new instructions on how enter data correctly for each program we have, and updating instructions to reflect any program or software changes. She trains new staff on CSST and assists in any data-related presentations for visitors to

our agency. Paige also trained Linda and Steve on Sharepoint (the program used to construct our IDMS electronic document system) and guided Linda in the creation of the new IDMS monitors group. The IDMS monitors are now our first line of support in each department, having been trained on the back-ground workings of SharePoint, and are able to troubleshoot problems.

Linda moved up to Garrett county full time 3 years ago, having built a home here. She has a varied career background. After getting a BA in anthropology from William and Mary, she worked for the Smithsonian Anthropology department for almost 20 years, cataloging and curating the ethnology collections, and working with Native American visitors. While there, she received her MA from GW University (to get a raise at work!) and became the museum’s Native American basketry specialist.

In a radical career change, Linda left the museum to work as a technology consultant for an educational

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software company, serving as a trainer and software support tech for the PG county school system. Here she learned how to create training materials, conduct extensive trainings and software troubleshooting and support. She later served as the technology manager at two individual schools in the DC / Baltimore area, before moving up to Garrett County.

In July of this year, Linda’s position switched over to provide additional support to our agency’s new part-nership with CSST Software, LLC, the new company formed in partnership between GCCAC, MILES Technologies, and Paige Teegarden to develop and market EmpowOR, the new version of CSST. Linda will spend half her time developing new documentation and other training materials for EmpowOR, and will serve as the first line phone support for EmpowOR customers once the system is up and running.

With her new position, she has handed over her responsibilities for IDMS and Sharepoint to the IDMS monitors, to be further supported by Bruce Tharp. She will still be supporting our agency with CSST questions, but will be looking to our departmental Data & Contract Managers to assume more of a leader-ship role in providing front line support for CSST questions from their departmental staff.

My name is Rachelle Watkins and I am an “Army Brat”! I grew up traveling all over the world, living in Africa, Germany and nine different states. I have also traveled to Kenya, Greece, Morocco and Costa Ri-ca. I have attended over 15 schools since kindergarten (I have lost track of exactly how many). In my past

life I worked as a manager at a golf course on a Navy base in Florida and as a Quality Assurance Officer for a Navy contractor at the Norfolk Naval Air Station in Virginia. I finally had the opportunity to “put down roots” in Garrett County and have lived here for almost 25 years. Since living in Garrett County I have worked as a Vacation Planner at Long and Foster Resort Rentals and prior to that I managed Cobblestone Alley Gift Shoppe as well as The Country Inn Bed and Breakfast (both family owned business-es). After 22 years serving the tourists of Garrett County and working al-most every weekend and holiday I decided it was time for a change. That is how I ended up at Community Action.

I am married to Steve Watkins and the mother of three awesome chil-dren (plus Steve’s four children) and grandmother to six precious grand-children. We live on Deep Creek Lake with our two Maine Coon cats named Bella Luna and Harley as well as an older Wheaten Terrier named Lucy who we just adopted from Hart this past Saturday!

My official title here at Community Action is “Administrative Support”. I soon found out what a wide range of duties that title encompasses. From day to day I am not sure what will come across my desk, sometimes electronic filing, typing, editing and proofreading documents, at-tending meetings and recording minutes, preparing presentation materials, managing calendars and sched-uling meetings. As a member of the IDMS Monitors Group it is also my responsibility to monitor several libraries in IDMS as well as assist other staff members when needed. On more exciting days I am planning and scheduling events like Board meetings, luncheons and ceremonies. Being part of the Executive Ad-ministrative staff and assisting in any way I can is sometimes challenging and always rewarding. I love be-ing in the background orchestrating the day to day activities of the office and making sure everything runs smoothly and efficiently.

Another View of Life and Work

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Most Unusual Response:

“I don’t know why I should write something when we have

people who get paid to write.”

Lynda Weeks

Carrie Getson has been with the agency for 11 years. She began her career with CAC as the senior case

manager for the emergency housing programs. During the restructuring of the agency, Carrie moved

into the newly developed Contract and Quality Manager position for the Service Coor-

dination Division. This new position required Carrie to dive deeper into how the Ser-

vice Coordination programs work. Service Coordination is responsible for all of the

housing programs—long term assistance and emergency assistance—as well as the Mar-

yland energy assistance program for Garrett County. This department meets with near-

ly 3,000 households each year. They are considered the ‘hub’ of the agency in some

ways due to all of the intakes they do. Last fall, with the retirement of Linda Green,

Carrie was offered and accepted the position of Director of Service Coordination.

“It has been a very rewarding experience for me to take over the Service Coordination department. We

have done a lot of work to tweak our processes to better serve our many clients. I have great staff that

work hard every day to better these processes. “

About me….I have an Associate’s degree in Social Behavioral Sciences from Garrett College and a Bache-

lor’s degree in Psychology from Frostburg State University. Before coming to CAC, I started the Social

Service Department at Goodwill Retirement Community where I worked for 6 years. I have 3 wonder-

fully awesome children who I am super proud of. I enjoy reading, camping, and any activity that allows

me to spend time with my family and friends. I am an avid beach enthusiast and love sunshine. And yes,

my curls are all natural .

“Curls”

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Working to Help Others

“Community Action helps people recognize they have the abil-

ity to succeed in life. I think that all of us within the agency

are dedicated to our mission and cause.”

Pam

“Working at Community Action is about finding

ways that people can improve the quality of their life and helping to build a community that provides access and opportunity for every indi-

vidual to be productive and reach their own goals. The work is both gratifying and im-

portant to our community.”

Duane

Our Home-

grown Talent

Kept Us En-

tertained at

the Recent

Hoot'nanny See flyer on page 7

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