conversation that changed my mind

For our MSP week five assignment we were told to interview an adult, either mentor, family member, or someone you knew.

My uncle came to visit after months of not contacting us so I found the perfect chance to interview someone.
As I asked him the questions that we were told to ask, I found really amazing new things that even I didn't know about my family.
My uncle grew up in a ranch being the 5th youngest kid of the 12 that my grandmother had. From a young age, things seemed difficult because my grandfather had to work extra hard to be able to provide food for all of his kids. my uncle started working when he was 7 years old by helping out his dad raise the crops, or even go with other people to work in the field for 8 hours and at the end of the day he got $40 pesos which today would be less than 4 dollars. When I asked him about something that changed his life when he was young, he answered, "having a job at such an early age was hard, sometimes my hands would be in pain from the work; however, having to go through all that made me realize that I had to have a better future to help out my brothers and sisters and parents."
As our conversation continued, I asked him about money and what would be a good advice for someone. His response was:
don't spend money on something that you'll only need once and then you'll just throw it away because it becomes useless, spend only on things that you know will be vital and will be needed throughout the years.
when he came to the United States, he got a job as a chef and got paid well and he was able to send money to our grandparents which eased things for us that were living there because we were able to go to school instead of having to work as well. He also started sponsoring a kid from another country. Every month he would send $30.00 to the program and the kid would send him letter and pictures. I remember that my uncle had a picture that the kid sent him where he was wearing new shoes and his smile on his face made you want to give all your money away to him so he could be happy.

His view of happiness and joy is to work hard, help others even if they aren't thankful sometimes, and help your family.

The end of a life changing journey /(Ｔ_Ｔ)\

These past weeks have been the best weeks of my high school years. Having the opportunity to help out someone who needs it and being able to donate to an organization that supported the cause we wanted to help out.

As the weeks went by, I learned a lot about how to evaluate organizations by looking at their tax returns and by finding out about their ideals about the cause and what they do each day to help out the cause.

At first Children and Youth Services seemed as interesting as animal care and I was still undecided about whether I wanted to do it or whether I wanted to try to do something else. As our groups got picked, I was still unsure about my cause. However, as the weeks went by, I got interested and started researching extra.

As for my group, it was a great experience to work with my teammates. Since week two I got to know a lot more about their beliefs, and how they thought about things. Although we had some communication problems, we started fixing that problem and it made us be more proficient in our work, made us agree easily on things, and finish our work faster and better. In addition, by working in groups, I also found out the importance of teamwork. working by yourself can be sometimes stressful because you get frustrated too easily when something doesn't go the way you want it. however, as I worked with my group, I noticed that when you were having trouble finding out about an organization or contacting them, they were there to help you which made the work really easy.


This Thursday, when we go deliver the checks to the organizations, I am hoping for the organizations to give us a warm welcome. I don't know if my organization is one of the ones selected to visit, but either way, I will be happy that my organizations will be donated at least $250.00 so they can help someone that needs that money to have food or whatever their necessities are. 

To the end of this amazing experience I thank Mr. Ponsford for  teaching us all about non profit organizations and for making this project possible.

Contacting the kindhearted people who help children for a better future

This week was a busy week due to the fact that I had to contact organizations to ask them questions about what they do to help. The first days were difficult since they didn't seem to answer,the answering machine always told our group to leave a message, or they transferred our call like a few times and ended up getting no answer. At first I thought they just didn't want to talk since we're high school kids and they think, " oh!, what can they know?" I was wrong though, after I kept insisting with the calls and getting no answer for two more days, they finally answered! All the organizations I called were helpful, they gave me a lot of information and the ones that answered my questions seemed to be cheerful and from what I noticed, they really love working there.

The most helpful organization was probably SAY San Diego, the employee I spoke with (I did not get to remember her name...) was really nice to us. She seemed impressed that we were high school students and already doing these kinds of things to help at such a young age. She answered all the questions and always kept a positive attitude towards my friend and I (she is in another group that is also focusing on children and youth services).

I wish I could volunteer there but you must be 18 years old or older to be able to volunteer since you have to work with kids who are underage. Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait one more year until I'm able to.





I apologize for writing a lot of stuff on my blogs, I tend to write a lot of details so I'll try to keep my next blogs short and to the point.
 내 사과를 받아주세요 (hopefully I wrote this correctly ..or it will be very awkward)

안녕히가세요 ~

numbers...numbers...numbers?! (・。・;)

Week three has by far been the most difficult one so far. We're were supposed to probably have narrowed down our choices for the organizations we wanted to help, but since they all seem to be a good one to donate to it is hard to choose the top ones. Many of the other teams have at least 3-5 organizations that they want to help out while we have 5-8 still. However, Mr. Ponsford taught the class about taxes and how they can help us look at organizations and look whether they are prospering or whether they are not doing so great. Taxes have a really interesting story that I don't want to talk about because I'm a bit clueless about it myself. All I can say is that by figuring out the income tax of each organization, it becomes much easier to decide about helping them or not. In the end I learned that it is crucial to look at the numbers before investing on something because that will show you if it's something worth investing in or if you'll just end up spending your money on something that doesn't show any signs of success.

   Anyways, back to talking about Children and Youth Services. During week three I learned some interesting facts about my cause that I didn't know.
For example, did you guys know that
     There are about 542,000 foster care children in the United States; 126,000 of them are waiting to be adopted.

That's only 23% of the kids being adopted while the other 77% wait and wait hoping to someday find a lovely couple who will adopt them and make them part of their family.

That ratio makes me feel sad because all children should be able to have a home and have a family that loves them and gives them care and protection.  What if i adopt a kid when I grow up? *starting to think*


 We also started another interesting project today called the Social Innovation Relay. This project is about to come up with something that will have a positive impact on society and the world. This also relates a lot to the Main Street Philanthropy because you're trying to make a difference in the community and may be the world as well. We were placed on the same groups as we are now; however, I hoped to have formed a separate team so it doesn't confuse us and makes us get lost. While they showed a video of people in Africa using bottles filled with water to use as light bulbs which was an amazing idea, my mind started thinking of ideas. One of them was a water filter that would purify the water in places where they don't have access to clean water; however, the filter also worked as a generator which provided electricity to the people in low resouces areas where they don't have access to electricity. I'm not sure if there are inventions like that, well besides the dams, but if there are not then it would be good to try to use that idea in Africa where most of the people have a difficult time accessing clean water and electricity.

    I am now looking forward to week 4 of MSP to see what new things I can learn and work with my team to see how we will help organizations supporting our cause! 
 

'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.

The Journey Begins...HERE! （⌒▽⌒）

Main Street philanthropy...

On Tuesday, March 5, 2013, someone walked into our Business Management and Ownership class. He introduced himself as Ryan Ponsford. He announced that we were about start a project that we would work on once a week for a few weeks. As he talked about Main Street Philanthropy I became more interested in knowing more about it and take part of this opportunity. Since I am a person who likes helping others and sometimes even before I help myself, I knew this would be a great thing to do and it would change someone's life.

He said something like " would you rather keep $25.00 or donate $250.00?" which made everyone most people go "WHOA! That's Awesome!"

In a later activity with a set of 20 cards called the M.A.D cards. We had to choose 10 cards out of the 20 which all contained different topics like arts, culture, Children and Youth services, etc. After choosing 10, we had to narrow the choices down to 6 and then to three which became harder to do each time. In the end I picked my top three choices which were:

1. Children and Youth Services.
2. Animal Care
3. Disaster Relief

I have a special reason why I chose these three topics and I'll share on my next blogs.. who knows.

I'm excited to see what new things we learn this week on Thursday March 14.

See you all and consider helping others. (^~^)