Each month, a Johnson Service Corps Member will introduce themselves to you in their own words. For December, we invite you to meet Elizabeth!
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Hi! My name is Elizabeth Brewington. I am a North Carolina native originally from Greensboro but I have spent the past four years in Wooster, Ohio attending college. It has been nice to come back home for my year of service, but it has made me realize how much I miss snow (Yes, I know how weird that sounds, but it’s true). I am living in the Durham house with three other corps members. We have had a great time getting to know Bull City, cooking together, having breakfast for dinner every Sunday, and watching “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” together on Friday nights (I am also known to randomly break out into the songs from the show when the moment strikes).
In my spiritual life, I am enjoying attending the Church of the Advocate. I grew up in the Episcopal Church and was really involved until college. There my spiritual practice was getting up early on Sunday to be the first to the library — safe to say I lapsed a little bit. During the week, I have gotten into journaling before I leave for work in the morning and listening to the “Harry Potter and the Sacred Text” podcast every day (sometimes multiple times a day). Journaling has brought some quiet to my normally hectic life and a chance to reflect and look forward to the coming day, while “Harry Potter and the Sacred Text” has brought me deeper meaning and a greater appreciation of one of my favorite books.
For my year of service, I am partnered with the East Durham Children’s Initiative. EDCI is a nonprofit that works to create a pipeline of services for families in a 120-block area of East Durham. We work with more than 40 partners to help families with children from birth through high school graduation.
I am on the Community Engagement Team, which means that I help with children’s programming from the planning stage through implementation. The programs I work include the Youth Leadership Council, which works with 4th and 5th graders to learn about food justice and nutrition and to become leaders in their communities. I also work with a literacy intervention to help kids in the zone improve reading comprehension and phonics. Finally, I am working on trying to bring two-generational programming to our Saturday out-of-school offerings so both parents and kids have time to work on skill-building.
I love being in Bull City and working for EDCI, and I can’t wait to see what adventures the rest of the year holds for me.