Our home, home on the range

As an entity that has been around for 20 years, we have had several home offices. We started off in a small cramped office in Union Square in New York City.  It was ok to be cramped because we were at that time a very local provider of services. We had been founded to address the growing HIV epidemic in the Latino Communities in New York City that had been forgotten by the masses.  It was ok to be cramped because we were often out on the street conducting outreach events to raise awareness and increase knowledge in so-called hard to reach communities. Except they weren’t all that hard to reach since our team was made up of individuals from very said communities.

As our services grew, as we saw a need to have a larger wide-reaching voice, we outgrew our office space. We then moved to a larger 5,000 square foot office in the Chelsea area of Manhattan. We were near public transportation making it easy ride for individuals to reach us.  We then grew even more in the early 2000s when we received our first national Centers for Disease Capacity Building grant. We then had a wider focus and reach. We were to build the capacity of other similar community based organizations across the country. We then acquired two floors and a whole slew of new committed team members. We have since even grown to have local offices in North Carolina.  We have been humbled and overjoyed at this growth and making these new offices a home for our team that day in and day out works hard out in the communities and out on the road.

Now as the work space culture changes with the myriad of technological advances we are looking to creating a new feel to the home offices where individuals can have broad range of movement and all teams are together in one space.  You know how breaking bread together can bring different people together to share a common goal? The same can be said about shared space. So, here we go again with a new change to the home office whereby teams are integrated and readily bouncing ideas off of each other. We are looking forward to this new dynamic and seeing how it enhances further our service provision.

As capacity building assistance providers that have a specialization on organizational infrastructure, we understand that an inviting and “learning organization” office culture depends on work space, flow and integration. How does your office layout imapct yoru work? Everyday we should remember that many, who spend more than 8 hours in the office space, find that to be their second home. A home on the metaphorically range.

Post written by Miriam Y. Vega @miriamyvega

Inspired by the daily prompt of home.