Hi Everyone!
This past week I completed my first service hours as philanthropy chair! It was a small presentation given to a group of third graders! The program was college mentors for kids and was to be about diversity. The idea was to show the students that the patients are the same as them, just sick. The students came to Tridelta, ate a snack, made door hangers for the kids at St. Jude, and then came over to listen to me talk about St. Jude and show them a video clip! It was a lot of fun, but I was very nervous! I asked if they knew what cancer was and the responses were hilarious! One boy said it was when you had to shave your head, one said when you lost all your hair, and finally one said it’s when you are sick! I then played the video. The students were in love with the little boy Caleb in the video. After the video played, I asked what they wanted to be. There were lots of professional ball players and teachers. The video talked about Chemo, but the students called it Kiwi. It took me a few minutes to figure out what they were talking about. They children were very excited to learn about St. Jude! They continued to ask questions and I continued to answer in the best, most simplistic way I knew how! It’s very hard to answer “Why do people get Cancer,” especially without using the word genetics.
My next service hours will be this Thursday and this Sunday! Letters from Home will have a meeting this week from 6:30-7:30 in BRNG 1230! We will be starting on Christmas Cards and packages! I plan on doing 25 packages! Each package will have Christmas gifts—Books and movies, hygiene products, Christmas Candy and Christmas snacks, and several other little gifts. All these items will be wrapped with several Christmas cards and letters. Christmas is my favorite time to send out packages because it is the time I feel when most military personnel miss their families the most. I will be going shopping for cardstock paper, stickers, ribbons, etc. before the meeting this Thursday.
Also, this Sunday is FlapJack Attack, the planning is well underway and the event will be successful! I was going to sign-up for several different committees for flapjack to be very busy and be an active member. Instead, I will be following around the current philanthropy chair and learning how she manages the events, etc. I think this will be very beneficial to my training and cannot wait to get another prospective on philanthropy events! I will be able to learn a lot and after this event, I will be on my own with planning the events for the rest of the year! I am very excited but nervous at the same time!
I have attached the video link in case anyone is interested in watching little Caleb or the other patients' ideas for when they grow up!
For the Kids,
Shannon Morton
Wow! You seem like you have a really busy schedule! I wish I could manage all of that, you seem to really enjoy it. I watched the video and I thought it was really cute! I too loved Caleb! It’s so amazing how all of the kids are still happy and enjoying life even though they are going through cancer treatments and are struggling to fight off the disease. I was really impressed with the last kid’s dreams. The stuff that he wanted to make seemed pretty scientific and I’m surprised he knew about it. I guess when you’re always in a hospital environment you pick up on a lot of scientific things that most kids aren’t exposed to. I thought it was funny that someone was calling chemo kiwi. Now the title of your post makes sense! I can see how it would be hard to explain cancer and such to third graders, it is a sticky subject in general. It sounds like you are doing a lot of really amazing things, best of luck with the rest of your projects! (:
ReplyDeleteYou always seem to be busy every week doing something to help others, which is so awesome! You also seem to be involved in a wide variety of activities instead of just working at one place. I think the new experiences could keep thins interesting so that you never have a boring service hour. It is so amazing that your sorority had the College Mentors for Kids children over to teach them about St. Jude’s in a fun way that they could actually feel connected to it. The Christmas packages for the troops are a great idea because I also agree with you that the Christmas holiday season is probably the hardest time to be away from the United States and their families. The packages will allow them to have some parts of the Christmas celebrations even though they are in another country, and the packages will also just make their days a little bit brighter because I know getting a package here at college makes me happy. Good luck with the Flapjack Attack and your transition into philanthropy chair!
ReplyDelete