'The brown paper bag of life...(≧∇≦)

Main Street Philanthropy week DOS!

This week seems to be my favorite so far.
          Why? The brown paper bag activity. On week one we were given a random, normal brown paper bag and we were told to bring three things that had meaning to you.
It was challenging to find the three things that were the most important to me due to the fact that I value a lot of things. So my final three choices were:
1) Phone and earphones.(Music)
I simply value music a lot. Music helps me relax and focus on what I'm doing and improves my work. Music also impacts my mood and helps me feel better when I'm going through a tough situation. If I were to describe how I feel while listening to music then I would say that once I put my earphones in, I go into another world, somewhere really calm and peaceful. 

2)USB Drive
-Some people might think that putting value into a USB drive is pointless and they might make fun of you sometimes.A lot of people make fun of me because they know that I love my two USB drives and protect them even more than my own phone. What they don't know is that deep within the space that is being used, there are many important pictures, documents and other things. In there I have lots of family pictures, and pictures of interesting things that I have seen and enjoyed. I also music stored in there so I can access it anywhere from a computer. I currently own three of them, but I only carry two of them because the third one holds all the pictures and important files I have.

3) Mom's picture of Jesus Christ
After family, this is my second MOST valuable thing i love. My mom told my sister and I a story about how she cut this picture from a calendar and put it on a frame. Ever since, she carries this picture everywhere she goes and never leaves without it when she travels. What made me start valuing it was that my mom has been taking care of this picture for over 20 years and she will not allow anyone to touch it because it is her most valuable possession. Every time my mom went through a hard time, she said that the only thing that kept her from giving up was the picture on the frame of Jesus Christ.



This week we were also put into groups with other students that shared the same common cause they wanted to help after they chose the three causes they cared about the most from the MAD cards activity on week one. While sharing our things from the bag, I learned a lot about my teammates. Someone from my group also valued family which was really cool, some others valued religion, animals, and some even valued energy drinks which most people would think of that as a waste of time.

Week two also was a bit challenging because after we got on our groups and come up with a purpose, vision and mission statement. At first it seemed fairly easy; however, once we tried working on it it became more difficult to complete. In the end, after the difficulties we faced we managed to finish it.
   In addition, we also were told to start researching organizations that we would want to help and list the names of the companies that we thought could be good. Our team already started planning on contacting some organizations and one of our members has someone that could get a guest speaker for our class and talk about out topic which is Children and Youth Services, but more specifically about foster care.

I am excited about week three and all the new things we will learn and also to start making a plan to help an organization, or more if we're able to.

While looking for foster care organizations, I found this video which really got to me and made my heart want to help as much as possible and think about someday becoming a foster parent and provide a safe home and give them all the attention and love they need.