Staff Transitions

This past June, Rick Diaz and his wife Ida packed up a rental truck and left Grand Rapids for sunny Texas. After 4 years of working on staff with the DeVos Initiative in the cold north, Rick felt led to return to ‘hands on’ ministry in his home city of San Antonio. Rick first became involved with the DeVos training as the City Coordinator for San Antonio in 1999, he later served as a coach for Denver, and then came on board in a fulltime capacity at the Grand Rapids, Michigan office in November of 2006. It was wonderful to have Rick working here with us and we will certainly miss his cheerful presence around the office. Fortunately, he is only a phone call away.

When Rick gave notice that he was planning to make a change, we took the opportunity as a team to re-evaluate how we get our work done. Two things quickly became clear. First, we reaffirmed that long term relationships with our cities and alumni were a top priority for the DeVos Initiative and second, as we added new cohorts of graduates each year, it was becoming increasingly difficult to nurture all of those relationships. After 14 years, we have over 700 graduates!

For a number of years now, each city has been assigned a ‘Staff Liaison’ who committed to maintaining relationships with alumni and supporting ‘follow up’ projects that the alumni might be working on as a way to supporting others who work with urban youth in their cities. We brainstormed ideas and decided to add several part-time liaisons who would work alongside the DVULI staff in cities that were clustered close to their own city geographically.