I used to not be very involved with volunteering. Just recently, I have been involved with more service projects and volunteer work than ever before in my life. I will tell you about one of the major projects I have been involved with recently called Community 101.
In our peer group class, we do a project called Community 101. We had to opportunity to research nonprofits, decide on issues in our community we want to address, look over grant applications, and eventually award nonprofit programs of the student’s choice a portion of a $5000 grant the class got from the PGE (Portland General Electric) Foundation.
The topic’s we chose this year was homelessness and foster care. The school helped us decide on homelessness by a survey that all the classes would fill out. Our class felt very passionate about foster care, so our two topics were established. Once we had our topics, we split up into committees and had various jobs to do.
I was in the Public Relations Committee, so our job was to advertise our project to the community. We created posters, sent out emails to the Register Guard and all the other local newspapers, called television stations, and made videos.
Once applications were made and sent out to the nonprofits that centered around our chosen topics, we waited for them to be returned to us, and then our decision-making process began. We made a list of all the nonprofits that applied and we set up interviews.
The nonprofits came and in the next following weeks and presented to us what they would do with the money that they applied for from our grant. We then chose the nonprofits we wanted to give a portion of the money to and split up the $5000 grant among the nonprofits we chose.
We also had to raise an additional $1000 to give to our school clubs and we presented the checks at an awards ceremony.
Even though this project was a lot of hard work, it was definitely worth it in the end. Knowing that my time and effort was spent helping someone else is very rewarding and I think if everyone would spend a little time doing something for the benefit of others, our world could be a better place.
We hear the word hero for a description of someone like a fireman or a cartoon superman. What is a hero exactly? Well to me, a hero is someone that puts their dedication or service for someone else. They always try their best at the challenges they are faced with.
My hero is and always will be my mom. A couple years back, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. She was in and out of the hospital all the time, and with my dad working, I was stuck watching my brothers all the time.
It was hard on our whole family. My mom would come home only to be quaranteened up in her room and none of us could go in and she couldnt come out. We would put her food outside her door which felt like a weird; unatural thing to do.
Eventually the treatments worked and my mom hasn’t had to go to the hospital in years. I remember that short period of time in my life clearly. I remember how strong my mom was, even when I know that she must have felt unhelpful and needed.
She had so much dedication and a drive to get better quickly. She didn’t complain and she would still help up with our homework over the phone when we couldn’t go in her room to talk to her. To me, that is what makes a true hero; not a strong muscle-bulging show off in tights or a uniform.
An animal that I would like to see more in the wild is a giraffe. I love the way they move and just the way they look. I always thought it would be neat to get really close to a giraffe and touch it. The way they eat it one of the most interesting things that I’ve seen than any other animal. When I go to the zoo, I see them in they’re enclosed area, and I think all animals that are not endangered should be able to roam free in their natural habitat.
All my blog web addresses I chose on my blog roll are very interesting and in depth. All the writers of the blogs are very good writers and they’re blogs show time and effort into every post. So if you haven’t now, check out these amazing people’s blogs.
I love this picture because butterflies are so harmless and innocent. They are one of many of God’s beautiful creations. It reminds me of the hot, sunny days in summer when you see butterflies everywhere; showing off their brilliant colors.
I love this picture because the purple flowers make the photo stand out. The colors are so vibrant and alive. The background makes the flowers even more beautiful in the picture.
I love this picture because the purple sky reminds me of the sunsets when i walk along the beach. The colors blend together perfectly and the elephants walking in the picture really sets it off to make the picture come alive. To me, it’s a mix of an African safari but in the background of a beach sunset.
Don’t get me wrong, I like blogging, but having it in a literature class doesn’t seem beneficial to me. Spending so much time on a computer writing different posts and having to find others peoples’ blogs around the world is fun, but I don’t see how it has anything to do with a literature class. I thought the standard lit. class would be reading different novels and famous pieces of work by Shakespeare, etc. Also, it is very time consuming. Maintaining a blog and checking comments and posting different things, such as cluster maps or avatars, doesn’t help with anything educational in my life. Overall, I think we can forego the blogs, and stick to reading and writing; but thats just my opinion.
I haven’t really heard about Earth Hour or acknowledged the fact that it was going on in the world. In my opinion, I dont think that there should just be an earth hour, but every day, we should take part in conserving our natural resources and living by the three R’s.
Every day, I try to live by them. I reduce what I use by only buying what I need, and not what I want. I reuse things, like water bottles so I’m not throwing away the same things a thousand times a day. I recycle things like paper products so we can use them again and not have to cut down our earth’s trees.
My avatar represents me because I have semi-brown hair. It is definitely more of a reddish strawberry-blonde color, but there wasn’t that many options for hair color. I have blue eyes like the avatar I made, and I love to wear things that are a little bit more formal, like my avatar. I also have freckles, which is shown on my avatar.
