We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mandy Vanderhill a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Mandy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So, let’s start with a hypothetical – what would you change about the educational system?
I’ve had a lot of experience in my life with education – both of my parents have masters degrees and it was talked about often in my home. I grew up knowing that I would get a masters degree too… in what, I didn’t know or care. It was just a status thing. I went to all private schools K-12 that cost thousands of dollars, all for the sake of a “Christian education.” I attended a very expensive private college, and was encouraged to go to that college, even though I could have received free tuition at the school where my mom worked. I majored in business at a liberal arts school, although again, my mom worked at a very prestigious college that excelled in business/health/IT studies. I eventually got my master’s degree from that business school, and it was the first time that I had any practical real-life education, not just some business class at the private school that focused on “Christians in the marketplace.” When I went to get my first job, I immediately looked at jobs in higher education because both of my parents worked in higher ed.
It wasn’t long until I realized: The American education system was built for and works for people just like me. Middle class, two parents, two parent incomes, highly educated, Christian, white, straight, every privilege I can think of. The American education system really doesn’t work for any of the people that I now get to work with, many of them refugees and immigrants, as the director of a non-profit organization.
I worked in higher ed for 10 years, but thankfully, I worked in the School of Workforce Development that was allowed to be more creative and responsive in terms of building programs that trained people to meet the demands of local employers. I didn’t work on the “main campus” with students pursuing degrees. I worked with students who wanted to become welders, auto mechanics, etc. because perhaps they were just coming out of prison, or barely made it through high school. They pursued certificates that would get them good paying jobs, not just degrees that gave them knowledge.
Now, as the director of a non-profit community center working with many refugee and immigrant kids, I have been asked to help students “go to college. ” I put that in quotes because it is a concept that they know nothing about, and yet know that in America, that is what we do. I recently built a career coaching program that pairs high school seniors up with community center volunteers to walk them through a coaching plan. I can do college applications and FAFSA all day long, but I knew we had to back up before it was ever time to do that. Many of these kids have so much trauma, from violence in their home countries, or from living in poverty as a new refugee in America. Getting them to college is not the hard part. The hard part involves: getting them to envision themselves inside a successful future, getting them to stop self-sabotaging their own success, getting their parents to understand that education is important to make more money and that minimum wage doesn’t have to be a way of life, getting them to have the brain capacity to think about what their passion is, not just what their older brother does for work.
There are so many barriers that could be addressed within the school system, even middle school, to help these kids start to create their own futures. Instead of adhering to the traditional school model, we need to think of school as a way to prepare students for a future outside of school. It’s not about learning math, which is also important. But unlearning cultural habits that keep them stuck, working with therapists to heal from their traumatic pasts, working with career coaches in high school to start to envision their paths forward. Many of them will never end up at a traditional 4 year college, and they shouldn’t. It wasn’t created for them. But there are still so many hopeful paths they can take if they just have some support from those of us who went down the American path only to realize there are much better ways.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My name is Mandy, and I started a nonprofit called the Woodfield Community Center (WCC). We are a bridge between communities where neighbors from all backgrounds can find belonging in their own backyards. Our core values are faith (a Christian organization), fun (we facilitate youth activities), and connection (our community is made up of about 20 different countries and languages, multiple church and business partners, and we’re involved in the local school district).
The concept of WCC was actually started by a local church where I volunteered and fell in love with the community. Eventually, the church asked my husband and I to become volunteer leaders, which we did for about 5 years before it became too much with our full time jobs. I worked at the local community college and my husband is a traffic engineer. When I began asking myself what my dream job would be, I kept coming back to the youth programming with the kids at WCC. I had so many ideas that I didn’t have time to implement because of my job, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to make this into a full time job. Once we decided to take the jump to create a 501c3, we started fundraising and raised over $100,000 the first year. I was able to quit my higher Ed job and become the only full time employee of WCC. I’m still the only full time employee, and this is my “baby”, but I love it.
Our goal is to simply connect neighbors together. We are on site at a local low-income apartment complex. Most of our kids would not have transportation to be able to go to other after-school or summer programming, so we conduct it right in their backyard. Since we have so many people from all over the world, and language is sometimes a barrier, we keep it simple with sports, games, arts and crafts, and tons of outdoor activities. We don’t have to speak the same languages to be able to make friends and build community. Many volunteers come from local Christian churches, but not all of our kids are Christians. We don’t believe in trying to convert anyone, and try our best to come without an agenda other than meeting and learning to love our neighbors. We also have a career coaching program for high school seniors to help them identify a post-secondary educational pathway that works for them and their families, as well as a basketball program for high school boys. We meet year-round, consistently, so that kids in this community have a safe place to hang out and find belonging.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
For most of us, 2020 was a year where all we could do was pivot. Of course, COVID hit us in all different ways, and just like everyone else, I had to pivot to figure out how to safely keep the community center open. The summer is my busiest time for the business, running the youth summer program 4 nights per week for 8 weeks. But with COVID, we were not able to operate normally and were forced to limit our gatherings to one night per week outside. Looking back, this was such a blessing, because my personal circumstances would not have allowed me to do more than this.
In May of 2020, I had a personal crisis where I was forced to pivot with my family in many unseen ways. My husband is my business partner, and this family crisis did not allow us to work together in the same way. We had limited contact, and we made the decision for my husband to take the summer off. Since COVID had already limited our programming, we used this time to also limit our own effort into the business to focus on our family crisis.
In the end, we were able to deal with this situation privately, while taking care of our professional and personal issues. But we were able to use the pandemic to our advantage to make the necessary pivots. Without this break in schedule, we would have been forced to shut down for the health of the family.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
A lesson that has been difficult for me is learning how to let go of relationships that no longer serve me, especially in a professional setting. I am a typical “over-stayer” when it comes to relationships, and many people would describe me as loyal. Now that I’ve done a lot of therapy and work over the years, I know that much of this is related to attachment issues. A core fear that I have is that I’ll be abandoned, and so I stay in friendships, jobs, relationships that may have been good and right at one point, but are no longer that. I’ve accepted breadcrumbs as opposed to authenticity, respect, and even love.
My nonprofit has a backstory that relates to this. About 15 years ago, a local church started the concept in a local neighborhood as an outreach program. The church eventually asked me to run the program as a volunteer, and it was obvious that they wanted to “hand it off” to someone. When I took over, the program exploded, and I knew I would not be able to sustain working a full time job and lead this outreach program as a volunteer. The church stopped promoting it, which meant I received less support and volunteers, but I began to look elsewhere and find support from other businesses and volunteers. Because of this, I knew I had the makings of a nonprofit and that I’d easily be able to get the money to pay myself as the director. When I brought this idea to the church, they laughed at me and said there was no way to do this. But as I told them, they were no longer providing support and this program was no longer theirs. It took me a few years to get the courage to fundraise, hire a lawyer for my 501c3 paperwork, and eventually tell the church that I was creating this into a nonprofit. I also communicated that I wanted to continue partnering with them.
However, I should have seen the signs over the years that they no longer wanted ownership over this and that they truly didn’t want to be involved. While I was trying to hang onto the relationship, they were showing signs that they were no longer interested. And because of this, I continued to expect them to behave differently, and continued to be disappointed by their lack of involvement. Even though their sense of power and control over my program was still present, their actions did not line up with their words.
This year, my board of directors had to get involved with a situation regarding this church, and it was the first time that I finally felt a release from trying to get them to approve of me. In the past, this would have resulted in me trying harder. But now, I know that my worth does not come from their support or approval. We’ve made the decision to do less with this church, and it results in a much greater sense of peace for me.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.woodfieldcc.org
- Instagram: @woodfieldcc
- Facebook: Woodfield Community Center
