Voices that Inspire

What inspires you from WFSU Public Media? Here's this week's Voices That Inspire. My name is Monique Ellsworth and I'm the Executive Director of CESE, which is a nonprofit in town. So CESE manages the Carnie Center, which is probably our most well-known program. The second program is Westgate, which is a housing program that helps transition folks out of homelessness into independent housing. The next program we opened in December is a no-cost dental home and then our newest program is the dwellings, which is our tiny house development. I was actually a student at FSU and I was interning at the Appalachian Center working with the individuals in our community who had no health insurance and I just became angry. I was enraged by the revolving door and the lack of resources and I spoke to my supervisor at the time and she said, if this makes you angry, maybe consider advocacy work, maybe consider focusing on the poverty. So she gave me a great recommendation to check out the Renaissance Community Center and that was seven years ago. Compassion fatigue and burnout are real things that happen to people who work in social services. One thing that probably helps me is this constant reminder to just be grateful so the practice of gratitude for me is really important and that's something that I'm able to practice with my work family. The employees of CESE, I feed off of their energy and the gratitude that kind of just bubbles out of all of our programs. What is built in this community to hold it together is deep and strong and I'm just so proud to like play some small role in a way to help someone feel connected to it and to be reintegrated into it and to be independent within it and I just cherish that small role. My name is Monique Ellsworth and I'm the executive director of CESE Inc. You're listening to voices that inspire.