Several Jepson students, alums and even one Dean (thanks Dean Williams!) participated in the first Hands On Richmond Day.\u00a0 Our job was to provide “back-up” for Hands On staff as they checked folks in and signed them up at the kick off.\u00a0 The rally actually got me awake and alert on a Saturday morning, not an easy feat.\u00a0 After the kick off, I went to volunteer at Southside Child Development Center where I got to see one of my colleagues in action as true leader.<\/p>\n
Shelia Pleasants\u00a0is the Director of Southside Child Development Center, a center providing scholarships and subsidized child care to\u00a02-12 year olds in the Richmond area.\u00a0 Southside is one of the oldest child care centers in Richmond and\u00a0has a\u00a0long tradition of dedicating high quality services to low-income families.\u00a0 I\u00a0knew Shelia because Southside participates in Success By 6’s STAR project,\u00a0a comprehensive quality improvement and professional development program for\u00a0child care centers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I arrived at Southside on Saturday, Shelia gave me a big hug and a paintbrush.\u00a0 She had three projects\u00a0going simultaneously– painting a room inside, laying new mulch and\u00a0painting a rusty fence to give it a new look.\u00a0 As I got to work on the fence, Shelia never seemed to stop.\u00a0 She had a shovel of mulch\u00a0in her hand while she was problem solving for the painters inside.\u00a0 As soon as we finished one section of the fence, she had another section ready to go.\u00a0 There was\u00a0Shelia up on a ladder sweeping cobwebs.\u00a0 And a second later, back off the ladder with “goop”\u00a0to clean our paint-splattered hands.\u00a0 Every moment she was upbeat, focused and thankful.\u00a0 Every moment she made me want to work harder\u00a0on the task at hand.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Shelia\u00a0is truly a servant leader.\u00a0 She dedicates her days, even her weekends, to making sure the kids of\u00a0Southside have the best and most nurturing experience in their\u00a0early years.\u00a0 She walks\u00a0the walk and talks the talk of what a caring and trustworthy leader should be.\u00a0 She does all of this without fanfare– just consistent, quality care and leadership.\u00a0 I think Shelia is\u00a0a gem in Richmond’s nonprofit community and I hope that other\u00a0Jepsonites will get to experience leadership like Shelia’s during the 150 Days of Service.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Several Jepson students, alums and even one Dean (thanks Dean Williams!) participated in the first Hands On Richmond Day.\u00a0 Our job was to provide “back-up” for Hands On staff as they checked folks in and signed them up at the kick off.\u00a0 The rally actually got me awake and alert on a Saturday morning, not … Continue reading Thoughts on Leadership from Hands On Greater Richmond Day<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":597,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[765,761,760],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections","category-service","category-updates"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/597"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}