For the past few months, we've been unable to do any work in the garden, This is due to the cold weather and the fact that the drip lines that water the beds broke. Last month, our adviser got a WHS teacher to help us repair them. Right now, we are weeding and clearing the area so that the reparations can begin. On another note, I asked Ms. Lebalch is she had given any thought to recruiting more members for the club since we are all graduating seniors. She said she had, and added that a couple of teachers wanted to help out as well by forming a gardening club committee for the 2018-19 school year. I was glad to hear this because I'd like Wooster to have a healthy, producing garden that's cared for.
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I've recently posted the infographics "A Citizen's Guide to Voting" and "Know Your Elections" around school. Sometimes the confusion around voting and civic duty can get overwhelming, so I'm hoping that by simplifying the voting process in the form of infographics, I am removing this obstacle for my peers.
Another thing I did to promote informative action through voting was submit a piece to my school's newspaper about voting eligibility, election dates, and registration deadlines. I spoke with the teacher in charge of the newspaper and asked if I would be allowed to submit my piece; he said yes. My piece came out in the March issue. The DCP deadline was March 14th and we submitted our project. Our submission included a 1-page project description, which I was responsible for, and a short video, which Mrs, Ana, our other GEAR UP SPIF, put together. Today is the last day that the community can vote for their favorite classroom projects. We sent out as many reminders as we could for people to vote for WHS GEAR UP Leadership. We'll know if we won by the 21st.
The officers of the club thought it was a good idea to participate; we were already planning on hosting a sock drive, and it would help us fund raise. During the next meeting, we presented our new project to the club and started to figure out how to meet the requirements put forth by the DCP.
To start off, we identified what we would do with the money if we won. We wanted to make sure that some of the money would go back to our community, since that's what we're all about. A portion of our funds would serve as scholarships for non-GEAR UP, first-generation students. We thought is was impressive that we, the GEAR UP students, would have the opportunity to help our peers just like GEAR UP helped us. The remaining amount would be used toward our end of the year event, whatever that may be. In terms of the sock drive, we decided to make it into a contest. After creating the bins, we'd seek teachers that would have bins in their classrooms. The class that collected the most socks would earn a pizza party. To promote the contest, we are going to submit a morning announcement and distribute flyers. In the end, the collected socks would go to our very own WHS Closet as well as the homeless. After my winter break, I contacted Stacey to set up a weekly schedule. Unfortunately, I was told me that she and other PLAN members were no longer at PLAN. There was a change in leadership, so I wasn't sure what to do. I talked to one of the college interns that left and she told me that she was now working with ACTIONN. She and Stacey thought that it'd be best if I also went to ACTIONN and I agreed. However, this semester seemed a lot more busy, so I decided to put it off until the summer. I felt that it would've been too much to handle. Nevertheless, I am still going to attend community events and continue to learn about advocacy and do what I can to teach my peers about the importance of voting.
On another note, I've also been learning about advocacy, civic engagement, and the like. I've gone through a few training sessions about voter registration and the power of storytelling in social justice advocacy. I also went to an event where progressive organizations in Nevada came together to share their missions and recent efforts. The reason I've been so involved in this is because I want to teach myself first before I help my community.
I've been talking to a UNR student that also volunteers at PLAN and she said that there's a new coalition being formed at the university: Nevada Student Power. It brings together the clubs on campus that are dedicated to social progress. I think I might get involved in this when I start college. Anyway, with the holidays coming up, PLAN members are going to be taking a break, and so am I. I plan to continue at PLAN early next year.
One of the Environmental Justice workers wrote and article about the whole ordeal and asked me to translate it into Spanish. I agreed, but then they thought it would be better if I created an infographic about the issue to give out at one of PLAN future environmental justice community events. I agreed and started right away. I read the article and did more research about it to get a better picture. I gave my drafts to Manny, the one who asked me to do this, and he submitted it to NISGUA (The Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala) organization, which is leading the effort in Guatemala. They gave suggestions and I made changes until a final copy was completed. You can see it here. During the entire process, I was surprised by the fact that I was helping inform the public about something that was happening in an entirely different country. I was glad that PLAN decided to fight the company because of it's presence in Reno. What this company is doing is just wrong, and they keep trying to hide/justify it. Awareness is key!
Over the course of about three weeks, I worked on creating infographics on the following topics:
-A Citizen's Guide to Voting -Homeless Voters -Voting rights of ex-offenders -Know your elections These infographics will be used as guides when we go out and register people to vote. I plan on posting the Citizen's Guide to Voting around school and submitting a small piece to the school newspaper with information about voting (deadlines to register, election days, etc.) I first met with Stacey Shinn on August 31st to discuss how I could get involved in PLAN. We did a run down on what PLAN does, and also what I felt most passionate about: much like in my meeting with Monique. I was introduced to the two college interns that had just started at PLAN as well. Stacey Shinn presented me as the new high school intern at PLAN (this came as a shock to me, I thought I was only a volunteer). By the end of our meeting, we had agreed that I'd be coming in every Thursday after school, since that was the only day I didn't have any other activities going on.
Upon leaving PLAN that day, I was impressed with it's work-place feel. On my first official day, I noticed that everyone had something to do. They even held regular check-in meetings with Stacey to track their progress. As a group, we got to know each other and what everyone specializes in. I began to work closer with Kyra and Mahalia, the college interns, on voter registration. But, before I could contribute to the project at hand, I had to teach myself about voter registration and associated processes because I was clueless. Upon gaining enough knowledge on these topics, I was surprised at how ignorant I was, and the fact that, I, a student taking American Government, was not aware of the implications of this fundamental aspect of democracy. Oddly enough, I began to feel really passionate about our efforts to raise civic awareness in our community. The following week, Kyra and Mahalia were handling a lot of new responsibility, for they were in charge of finding a location to hold DACA renewal workshops (the deadline was approaching soon) for those in our community that needed help. So, upon seeing that they were going to be focusing on that for a while, I offered to take on Kyra's idea of creating pamphlets that we could use to help people under different circumstances better understand their rights and the voting process while registering individuals to vote in the community. This week I was informed that we wouldn't be allowed to create a compost bin for our garden. There is a concern that the accumulation of material in the compost bin would give rodents a permanent nesting place. It's unfortunate that this would be a problem, but I would still prefer to have a garden and school that doesn't host rodents. Now, this means that we have a handful of pallets available for other projects.
I remember having spent a few weeks at a summer enrichment program hosted by GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs). We had multiple guest speakers come by and talk to us about careers. One of the speakers worked at PLAN, an organization whose main focus is social activism. I didn't think much about it; social activism, as I saw it at the time, was futile and uncomfortable to participate in because people generally don't care about anything that has to do with politics, even in the slightest way.
Nevertheless, after having read a book on civic engagement, I remembered that PLAN was a platform on which I could take civic action. So, I found the old contact card I was giving a few years back and went on their website. Under the volunteer tab, I sent an email to whomever it concerned, explaining that I wanted to help out. Soon enough, I received a response from Monique Normand, the civic engagement organizer. She proposed that we meet, so we did; we discussed what PLAN was all about (civic engagement, racial equity, economic justice, immigration, and environmental justice), as well as what I was interested in most. We planned to contact each other as opportunities came up-- and to be completely honest, I left that meeting only expecting to come by every once in a while. never diving deep into the work of PLAN. Anyway, time went by and I put PLAN at the back of my mind. Monique was down in Vegas for a while doing a lot of advocacy, so it wasn't until about a month later (during which I had had my first S.L. interview with Mr. Coli) that contacted her again. Monique explained to me that she had been in Vegas and that she was actually going to take a different position at the University of Nevada, Reno. She was able to connect me to the new PLAN civic engagement organizer, Stacey Shinn, so that I could start to get involved. My recent project has been to create a letter that asks for a tool donation. Given that we only have enough tools for basic garden work, we've found that we can't work as efficiently as we possible can--and since we'll be doing much more this year, we have to find a way to change this. When I first got this idea, I visited the Home Depot near my house and looked around the Garden Center. I then spoke with the woman at the register and asked if Home Depot provided donations. She said that they did, and that all I had to do was write a letter and turn it in to the service desk inside the store. She even mentioned that such requests are accepted 9 out of 10 times. So, a few days ago, I spoke with Ms. Lebalch about asking Home Depot for tools, and she thought that now was a great time. I thought of a few things we needed, but also asked her what she thought was necessary. I typed up the letter, but after doing some research on how to approach such a task. I consulted online advice on how to format a donation letter and how to adjust my tone to come across as genuine and not-too-pushy. I found various examples and tips to help create the donation request letter. It took me about an hour, maybe more, to create a good, first draft. After that I spoke to Ms. Lebalch after class and asked if she could read over the letter, as well as point out anything else I should include. [According to Ms. Lebalch, Wooster High School can actually give Home Depot a letter for tax deduction! Adding this to the letter definitely solidified our request] Finally, upon editing the letter, I went to Home Depot after school. I approached the service desk, explained our situation, and handed in the letter. {home-depot-tool-donation-request.html}
It's only been a week and I've already attained a pallet donation from my local supermarket, WinCo Foods. I initially came upon the idea of using pallets to create most of the projects I had in mind for the garden while I was looking at ideas on Pinterest (i.e. garden beds, a garden sign, etc.). I searched for ways to get pallets and found out that many local businesses have extra ones they don't need; so I contacted WinCo through their main website and sent an email asking for a donation.
Toward the end of my gardening project, I plan on sending out thank you emails/letters to anyone that helped the club in any way.
My next step is to ask Home Depot for tools donations given that our gardening club only has one of everything for multiple people. {winco-pallet-donation-email-memo.html} Let me back up to beginning of junior year. At this time I had never really noticed the garden at my school--it was rather dry, unattractive, and neglected. However, that didn't stop me from secretly wishing that I could become a gardener in the future. So, when a classmate mentioned that a teacher, Ms. Lebalch, was taking care of it and create a gardening club, my friend and I immediately went to talk to her.
It wasn't until after meeting with Mr. Coli, the IBCP coordinator, for my first S.L. interview that I began to think about how gardening club could be much more than it was at the moment, and so I began to look for garden improvement ideas on Pinterest. Soon enough, I came up with these goals for our garden:
1) Create a compost bin that will produce good soil material for our plants (this would save the club a lot of money) 2) Create a large, decorated WHS Garden sign to put up 3) Paint the existing raised beds with wood stain so that the garden looks more animated and attractive 4) Create small signs for the different plants in our garden (especially for the not-so-obvious ones that the occasional teacher/student ask us about) 5) Sell or donate what our garden produces in the spring/summer 6) Get Gardening Club in the yearbook - My biggest concern is that there will be no students to care for the garden next year (especially if it still looks plain and dull and in need of major improvements) since the current gardening club members are all graduating seniors. I want to get the hard stuff done this year so that the garden is in better shape and easier to maintain for the next few years. |
AuthorIBCP student at Wooster High School aspiring to be a civil engineer Archives
April 2018
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