Vibrant Communities and Organizational Performance

¶ … vibrant communities and organizational performance stems from my work with various types of communities. In working to make communities vibrant, one has to help them learn to assist each other so that all members can enjoy a more improved way of life. Regarding this work I have devoted much of my time and effort towards helping individuals both young and old towards improving certain aspects of their lives.

In relation to my work with youth I have been involved with the Ohio Read Foundation. This organization is responsible for helping young children to read and for working to improve their self-esteem through praise and encouragement. I believe that turning communities into vibrant ones involves not only the work of helping individuals but also of teaching the youth the philosophy of caring for others.

Since the youth represent the next generation it is highly important to instill in them the value of being involved in volunteer work so that they will learn how to handle the needs of less fortunate members of the community. To take an example from my own experience of teaching youth this value, I have vigorously worked towards encouraging my daughter and other young people to work for this foundation. I am thus a firm believer in improving community life through the active involvement of the youth.

Besides young people I have also focused much of my effort towards improving the lives of elderly communities. I have done this through conducting research towards discovering how therapeutic outcomes for elderly individuals can be improved, thereby enriching their life style. I hope to continue my research in this endeavor so that I can make a difference in the ability of individuals to grow older with confidence. Thus my interest in improving community life is based on coming to the aid of others, teaching the youth to volunteer, and finding out how life for the elderly can be significantly enhanced.

The way I see myself as a practitioner-scholar is as someone who is highly capable of combining the knowledge gleaned from both one's scholarly pursuits and one's practice in the field. This is essentially what a practitioner-scholar sets out to do through his/her work and study. I see myself as someone who tries to always perfect his/her skills and abilities at work through acquired scholarly knowledge. I have spent many years working as a healthcare practitioner; I have gained an enriching amount of knowledge and experience from working in the field.

I am currently in the process of obtaining my doctorate degree in management. After fulfilling my scholarly endeavors I hope to bridge the gap between the knowledge obtained from research and that obtained from practice. I believe that knowledge from both these areas complements each other significantly. In order to be the most effective practitioner in one's field one needs to acquire the scholarly knowledge related to it. This can help one to gain some much-needed insight into the theories and methods related to one's practice. Likewise if one endeavors to become the most well informed expert in one's field one needs to acquire experience from working in it. This can help one to apply whatever was learned in one's scholarly pursuits to the test.

Currently my research focuses on the working alliances in home healthcare. Working alliances can be studied in many areas of healthcare, including medicinal therapy, social services, long-term care, etc. My hope is that whatever information I gain through conducting my research will enhance the outcome between practitioner and patient. I wish to be someone in the field who is capable of attaining the trust and commitment of their patients towards abiding by their practitioners' orders.

The basis for financial need is dependent on three factors in my life. The first factor is that my family's earnings are obtained from a family farm, whose income is very unpredictable. Oftentimes it so happens that my family incurs financial losses from one year to the next based on certain bad investment decisions involving the farm. The second factor is that my family currently supports three people attending college. Due to the uncertain financial circumstances surrounding our family income, tuition and other expenses are difficult to meet for those members of my family in college.