Smile for the camera ladies!!!!
1182 words by mwallac1
Several participants and One counslor of
the program at a swim party to mark
the beginning of Spring.
Well by now we know what my project is so I don’t need to repeat it but for those of you who don’t I am aiming to help eliminate poverty in New Orleans as well as the nation. To accomplish this I am trying to help empower our future generations that lie after us. My project has taken a turn for the better since last time I blogged. I must day things are really going great. The picture above is a picture taken at an event that we held a couple of weeks ago to help raise money and mark the beginning of the spring season, what better way than a pool party. We swam in the Reily Center and they partied on the front campus. To be honest I was really unprepared for what was in store this day. I was invited to give a speech in front of 3 very big donors as well as some perspective donors. It was hard because I am usually very shy especially when speaking in front of people who can pretty much make or break many activities that our camp promotes. Well I gritted my teeth and did what was necessary. It turns out that it wasn’t as bad as I though it would be once I got up to speak. When I was finished giving my speech the donors were so moved and motivated that two of them actually volunteered to help with my projects expansion idea. Both were willing to write letters to the schools and councilmen that I wrote to in blog 8. Not only were they helping with my expansion but hey also made a donation together of twenty thousand dollars. This was a very exciting event. I never thought that I would feel the way I did at the end of that night. Some of the money we raised will be used as start up money for the other two campuses that we are aiming for. Hopefully we will have one of these two if not both up and running by the end of this year so that camp can start next summer.
My project was implemented to accomplish three things. These three components are to help eliminate poverty, give younger generations a positive role model and to help empower them as well. My project is in full swing and the girls are more excited than ever to be able to expand. Another aspect that is being added because of my ideas for expansion is an opportunity for the girls to travel. The girls will have the option to go to an outside camp at another state where they can mingle with girls of other cultures and hopefully receive some cultural experiences and make friends in other areas outside Louisiana. It will also give them an opportunity to travel outside the city which many have never done and probably wont. When I was a sophomore in high school my friends and I would sit around and talk about all the places we wanted to go after school for college and to travel. When I asked some of the young girls in my camp what they wanted to do and go many couldn’t give me an answer or had never thought about traveling and expanding their horizons. I hope that this program will help to give them more intellectual expansion. When we give the girls from under privileged neighborhoods an advantage we are helping our community and nation. My projects implementation is extraordinary and making one heck of a difference in the lives of many young girls. Not only do they get motivation out of this they also look up to what I am getting accomplished in such a short time. When they see a young black college students in her early twenty’s that has started a movement that will help benefit hundreds now and hopefully more state to state they see what they can have accomplished in such a short time. This camps expansion also helps parents with multiple children households.
Households with multiple children can be very expensive. Our camp has sponsors such as Wal-Mart, Office Depot, Soul Train Fashion, Cajun (local uniform shops) and McDonalds that give very generous donations. The local uniform shops help with uniforms; each girl is given one shirt of her schools color with a matching bottom. Each of the school supply stores donates supplies so that the parents have a helping hand with the expensive supplies. Finally, McDonalds gives each girl a book of 5 McDonald’s gift certificates equaling to 5 dollars and this is only the things that are issued to each girl during the beginning of the year. Throughout the remainder of my implementation of my project as well as my duration with the program I will be focusing my time on trying to get more companies to donate more so that we can have more giveaways for the girls. I mean don’t get me wrong we do have give away that the girls can benefit from but not as big as the back to school giveaway.
First let’s define a counter cultural experience. A counter cultural experience is used to describe the values and norms of behavior that is not the same as the social mainstream of that time. Jesus was a cultural encounter on many aspects. One that I find most counterintuitive is that everyone was not treated equally during these times and he wished to change individual’s views on how each person was categorized. Women were alienated, Jews were persecuted and that only marked some of the discrepancies. Jesus worked to changed individual views and does the work of his father. As the messiah he preached to turn the other cheek and treat each individual as an equal even though we did have minor differences such as skin tone, areas of birth and languages. Another way that Jesus was counter cultural is because Jesus was seen without sin. Jesus died for sins or crimes that he did not commit. You can tell be text of the bible that he was actually crucified because the men who wrote and have rewritten the bible would never put such heinous, embarrassing, odious statements in the bible about the messiah.