Hope for Kids

For the first four meetings of Hope for Kids, we only managed to go to the hospital once and we spent the rest of the Thursdays planning. As a team we decided on different activities that would appeal to different interests of the individual kids. Being sensitive to the kids’ needs and generally their lack of ability to participate in physical activities, we had to come up with activities that would still be fun and engaging. As a group, with individual ideas being reviewed as a whole, we came up with activities such as origami, leaf painting, and board games. I took on a more leading role as I strove to keep the ideas flowing and the topic on track.

Some time during last year or this summer there were several hundred Hope for Kids t-shirts ordered. I was unaware of this, but we now need to find a way to sell them and raise money for the hospital. We first had to sort through all the t-shirts and organize them so as to not be a burden on the teachers who were kind enough to let us store them in their classrooms. We then needed to think of a way to sell them. As I believe that these shirts can be a great marketing method, I am very keen on continuing work in this area, however a conclusion hasn’t been made as to what the group feels we should do first. Several ideas were thrown around including selling tickets to a show of some sort that then pays of the t-shirt price and also raises money for the hospital, or if we could sell them at UN day, or something similar.

The future of this CAS is good for me, as it allows me to take a leadership role through committing to the program and being able to understand the new requirements of the program. Additionally, the group requires me as well as the official leaders, to initiate activities and have the leadership position in maintaining focus and perseverance within the group. Finally, I am lucky because the hospital allows me to have a hands on way of connecting with the people whose lives I’m trying to improve.

Volleyball as a Team Sport

This year has had a short volleyball season. As a senior I am disappointed at this fact as volleyball has been an activity I have committed myself to passionately for over 6 years. We were very lucky that last year’s team was a truly special combination of incredible talent, passion to push ourselves to new limits, and not afraid to try new things. Coming from last years team into a team that is starting almost from scratch is a bit of a challenge; I am one of the first to admit that I sometimes (basically: a lot of the time) lose my temper when we don’t get something this year that we did perfectly last year. 
But I am also very proud of our new volleyball girls. While I am not team captain or co-captain, as one of the three seniors on the team I have a crucial role in that my actions on and off the court and even outside of the gym play an important role. I must be a good example, something which doesn’t always come naturally to me. As one of the older girls I have to often initiate activities, undertake and develop new skills and be supportive. Volleyball more then most sports is a team sport, which makes communication and teamwork crucial. I am thrilled to say that our team this year is much more of a team mentality then the team last year. We have all worked very hard and made much improvement and I’m looking forward to all of us being able to show our ability at SAISA.

CAS Goals for Semester One of Senior Year

·         Blog at least once a week about CAS accomplished.

·         Include at least one photo or piece of evidence per post. 

·         Improve collaboration with others. Become more of a team member and less of an individual worker.

·         Participate in Hope for Kids: Cancer Hospital weekly, showing perseverance and commitment in my activities, and push my own boundaries in the Service, understand my areas of weakness and work on improving them. Push my boundaries while working with the children. The creative element would come through if I could improve their website possibly.

·         Take leadership roles more often and initiate activities within this role. This would be through Volleyball and Hope for Kids.

·         Simultaneously participate in SAISA volleyball and follow individual training plan outside of school (Tough Mudder training plan).

http://toughmudder.com/

http://toughmudder.com/obstacles/

http://toughmudder.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/maybe-mudder-boot-camp.pdf

http://toughmudder.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/tough-mudder-boot-camp.pdf

·         Come up with new and positive ways to document active progress to show perseverance and improve moral. This is response to the understanding that an area of weakness I have is losing commitment when progress isn’t shown in obvious ways.

Contacting Ashwini and Ashani

Ashwini:           

When I needed to get in contact with anyone in the dog rescue/adoption/rehabilitation field, I knew to contact Ashwini again. We exchanged emails and worked collaboratively to determine what organization I would work best in a collaborative sense considering my strengths and weaknesses and what talents I have, and then who we should contact for me to work with. Over the course of several long emails exchanged at unholy times in the morning we worked out that I could meet and discuss my ideas with a friend of Ashwini’s who worked at Odel and Embark, named Ashani.

Ashani:

I spoke with Ashani, the woman who Ashwini recommended over email several times about the global issue of stray dogs and their effect on the community, then I had to face one of my weaknesses, which is talking over the phone with people I don’t know. After several phone calls we organized to meet at Waters Edge to talk about my individual skills and how I could help Embark and Ashani, and which way would be best for everyone for me to help.

Over the course of the meeting I outlined my technical and artistic skills, and we compared schedules to see possibilities of when we could work collaboratively and initiate activities such as the Maharagama Clinic. Overall she outlined several basic possibilities that benefitted my already existing skills and help me find new skills such as public speaking (which I’m terrified of) and advertising. Overall, I could:

·      Help raise awareness on the importance of sterilization and vaccination,

·      Especially in schools to help educate children on sterilization, vaccination and preventing dog bites, also help promote responsible and correct pet ownership,

·      Encouraging others to help save street dogs by adoption,

·      Helping a litter of rescued puppies by fostering or encouraging others to,

·      Volunteer at events like adoption day, sterilization clinics, fundraising events, and more,

·      And helping to fund raise.

Overall we decided I could:

·      Work at the Maharagama Clinic (which spayed and neutered dogs), helping around and cleaning up.

·      Working with special needs dogs.

·      Advertising.

·      Fund raising.

·      Creating awareness in the community of younger individuals (visiting schools, etc.).

·      Possibly training dogs.

Hope for Kids: Cancer Hospital: Second Trip

During my second trip to the cancer hospital, I got to actually interact with the kids (doesn't make the first trip sound to good, does it?). A small group of us including Avinash, Ian, and I were in charge of working collaboratively with each other and the children to do finger painting. We had only two colors of paint, green and blue so we had to get a little creative.
This was an interesting challenge for me because, while I'm artistic and basically enjoy any type of art, I prefer much more precise forms of art. For me to do something vague and more impressionistic was much harder then I expected.
As individual children came to our table we would work through basic instruction on what they could do, then really just let them have free rein over their creative talents. We were also in charge of making sure a large scale mess wasn't created. We had to plan around who would help each child and do what at the station, therefore we created a system where I tried to keep the station generally organized and have the papers drying out after they were painted without flying away. Avinash did most of the interaction with the little kids.
One of the sweetest things I saw happened when a small child saw Ian's painting of a crab. The child then proceeded to recreate the picture, in a different color, and write "Crab." Just like Ian's painting. The fact that the little kid noticed the painting was super sweet, and I know that Ian felt complimented.
It was challenging at clean up time because of the need to keep the kids organized while still accomplishing the task at hand. It is important to understand the implications of our actions, and we must be careful how we act around the kids. Therefore, when a little boy ran up and grabbed some paintings I had made, I simply allowed him to do it as he expected a response. After he grew bored, he put them down on a table and walked off. I then proceeded to collect them.
I know for a fact that this Service trip will increase my tolerance and patience levels, as they are both necessary for interaction.  I also hope that over the rest of the time I do the project, I can bring hope to the kids lives.

Redoing the Service Plan

While I signed myself up for the Service program run by school, I also redid my plan for individual work outside of school. I made sure the plan was specific enough that I would follow it so I could credit the service. I also made sure that it was interesting and detailed on what I wanted so that I would continue to want to work with my ideas. This is the plan:

Margaret Watts

CAS Plan

February 19, 2012

The first time I met Ashwini was when she was boarding our dog, Tina, at her boarding house. Ashwini loves dogs and has adopted several strays before, and we bonded over this mutual love for animals. After my family and I moved into our house with Tina we frequently visited Ashwini to hang with the new dogs and so she got a chance to see Tina as well. It was over these return trips that we started discussing the possibility of a CAS project with street dogs and adoption.

I would work with Ashwini individually except that I need an organization that I could work with collaboratively over a long period time commitment, while doing different stuff such as designing a website or creative networking. Working, as an individual volunteer would be a new challenge for me –and also an area of weakness since I have never really done it before- since I generally am not very comfortable contacting groups and interacting with individuals I don’t know personally. I believe a good way to help an organization would be to design and maintain a website for them, since it would be a modern way to advertise the organizations needs, show their mission, work collaboratively with them, and also develop new skills of my own that would help throughout life; obviously, it would be necessary to first see what the organization needs, instead of simply deciding for them. Also, a website would be a good way to possibly advertise street dogs available for adoption or fostering from the organization, which would deal with the ethical issue of overpopulation of dogs roaming the streets and possibly spreading diseases.

To document my progress with the street dog organization I would blog about it weekly in my CAS blog, “Thinking of Tomorrow.” If I do end up creating a website, and if they allowed it, I could have a link to my blog so that a visitor could see the link between my creation, CAS, and my blog.

The first step to the plan, which will be done in the first week, is to contact Ashwini to see which organization she thinks would be most efficient in interaction and would benefit most from the volunteer work. I would then contact the organization she recommended and discuss with them what they would need in terms of volunteer service. If that went smoothly, I could begin the prerequisite research that would contribute towards developing whatever they wanted me to do (if thy had wanted a product like a website or something similar that I had never done before), or begin service work if they wanted me to interact with the animals and get them acclimated to human interaction (or other direct action similar to that).

Activity	Deadline for Completion	Output/Deliverable
Telephone Ashwini for advice re: street animal organizations and my idea of a website linking people to street animal services available.	19 Feb	Blog re: her advice. Additional activities input into plan.
Print notices for street dogs and post at school and at other locations where people congregate (Il Gelato).	21 February	Blog re: effectiveness of this approach to get dogs adopted.
Post notice in school newsletter re: puppies for adoption.	21 February	Blog re: effectiveness of this approach to get dogs adopted.
Meet with at least one street animal organization to ask about needs, discuss my skills and time commitment.	27 Feb	Blog re: needs of organization. Add details and next steps to my plan.
Possibly design informational website where people can find links and resources to help street dogs.	On going	On going blog re: how many people visit the website and the effectiveness of this approach to get street dogs adopted.

Hope for Kids: Cancer Hospital: First Trip

On my first trip for Hope for Kids we only got to spend about an hour at the hospital, still it gave me a good introduction to the individual Service program. For some reason the first thing that really struck me was that we had to remove our shoes before entering the building. I felt this was partly due to the cultural respect, and partially to keep the germs and dirt away from the kids. When we walked into the building I immediately realized that I could return to this place to help out. As we split into groups, I was partnered with Ian and we were assigned with cleaning the common area with the toys such as bikes and toy cars. While some people might feel this was demeaning to have to clean while others got to play with the kids, I feel like this is almost as important because, while the kids need fun interaction, the area also needs to be clean to make sure their already weakened immune systems don't catch anything else.
Ian and I collaboratively came up with the plan to divide up the area of the floor into three and move the equipment that Ian needed to clean in to the middle so I could sweep around it and under the tables at the edges of the room. After that we moved the equipment back, swept the middle of the floor, and then let our perfectionist sides take over. We definitely showed commitment in cleaning the entire area and we both know that an area of strength for us is our perfectionistic tendency to want whatever we start to be finished to the highest level (mainly when it comes to cleaning). We managed to completely clean the entire floor of the room and all the toys/equipment in it in an hour by working collaboratively together.

Overall, I'm really happy with my participation in this Service project and am looking forward to continuing.