What an amazing week it has been! We wrapped up our Connect2Complete service projects today by volunteering a second time at Shared Harvest, filling bags for their backpack program.
Today we had 7 students, 1 instructor, 1 advocate, 1 site supervisor and I (the VISTA) participate. It was exciting to see a higher number of students participate than last week.
It was awesome to see how the interactions between students changed over the course of the project During the van ride to Shared Harvest there was little conversation between the students despite our best efforts. However, on the van ride back to the school all of the students were chatting, asking questions and even laughing. This trip to Shared Harvest seemed to yield better results in terms of creating a bringing the students closer and creating a feeling of community. Nonetheless, both groups were considerably more after participating in the project together. This indicates that the project, at least briefly, created a greater connection between the students than they had had prior to the serving.
As stated in an earlier blog, with every service project there are always certain obstacles or challenges that occur. This project was no exception to this rule.
One of my lovely supervisors was out sick and unable to attend the project. Fortunately this was our second time at Shared Harvest and we knew what to expect, who to look for when we got there and where to go. That was the first obstacle.
The second obstacle was that the volunteer coordinator and our first contact person when we arrive, Ben Powers, was not at Shared Harvest when we arrived. Ben is a Miami University graduate and wonderful at (quickly) explaining the Backpack program, what Shared Harvest does and how math fits into all of it. Thankfully, Shared Harvest's VISTA Kayla was there filling in for Ben and explained to the students what Shared Harvest and the Backpack Program are and what they do. I then had to ad-lib the portion of how they use math and how important it is to the success of the program and organization.
All of the participants seemed to have a good time filling bags, even when the bags would not open!
Below are some pictures from the service today and of our discussion outside before we left!
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