GOTR Community Service Project

As most of you know I’m coaching a program called Girls On The Run (GOTR). The program is for girls ages 8-11 and it “educates and prepares girls for a lifetime of self-respect and healthy living”. We go through a number of exercises and activities each time we meet, and the program ends with the girls running a local 5K.

The season has 24 lessons that focus on three main topics:

1. All About Me – Getting to know who I am and what I stand for

2. Building My Team – Understanding the importance of cooperation

3. Community Begins With Me – Learning about community and working on a community project

Community Begins With Me

We started on “Community Begins With Me” a couple weeks and began discussing what a community is, what communities the girls are a part of, and what it takes for a community to run smoothly. We then started talking about the community service project with them and had them start thinking about what they would like to do as a group for their community project.

Developing The Project

We brainstormed with the girls last Tuesday to help them come up with a great community project idea. The project had to be something that we could complete during one session (one hour time limit) and at our regular meeting site (Carmel Valley Community Rec Center). This ruled out anything that took a lot of time, or involved us having to go somewhere else to complete the project.

Some of the ideas that they came up with were:

• Create puppets for a puppet show to benefit a local hospital
• Create holiday cards for the elderly and homeless
• Collect clothing for a homeless shelter
• Make cards for a local hospital
• Collect shoes to donate
• Collect toys/canned food/clothing for a shelter

We took a secret vote for the above ideas (eyes closed, hands raised so no one’s feeling was hurt if their idea wasn’t chosen) and the winner was.....

Creating holiday cards for the elderly/homeless!

One idea that I didn’t move onto the voting stage? “Going to a hobo village and giving out food!”. Umm… hobo village? Ha ha. What? Wait, I think there is actually one right around my storage unit downtown. No jokes… it’s a bit colorful down there. I informed the girls that “hobos” isn’t really a nice name for homeless people and that they probably shouldn’t call them that. They seemed a bit confused … apparently K-12 education has updated their lingo since I was last in school.

Anyways, we then went around the group of girls and had them all list something that they would bring to help make the cards. We had a long list of items including: envelopes, markers, colored pencils, glitter, pipe cleaners, construction paper, stickers, crayons, gel pens, and envelopes.

I then needed to figure out a place that we could send the cards. I figured a hospital or senior home might not want a random package of cards to show up on their door, so I looked to see if there were formal charities or organizations set up that would fit with our project. Luckily, I found two! While doing my research I found two programs that I thought the girls would enjoy, and decided to present both of them to the girls as options to see which they liked better. While they weren't hospitals or senior centers as they were originally hoping for, they were great options that would work for our project.

Option 1 - "Holiday Mail For Heroes"

http://www.redcross.org/holidaymail

This is a program put together by the American Red Cross which allows Americans to "send a touch of home" to US service members and veterans across the country and abroad.

Option 2 - "Make A Child Smile" (MACS)

http://www.makeachildsmile.org/index.shtml

This organization provides emotional support to families whose children suffer from chronic or life-threatening illness. Most of these children are chronically ill and some are terminally ill.

There were a few guidelines for both of the programs, they both prohibited glitter due to health concerns, they also both recommended leaving our religious references or specific holiday greetings (since not everyone celebrates Christmas), and for the children’s cards they sadly asked that the cards did not contain the phrases “Get well soon” or “Get Better”, since many of the children in the program have illnesses with no known cure and unfortunately never were going to get better. Wow.. so sad. :o( The site suggested instead to say things such as “Wishing you well”, “Praying for you”, or “Thinking of you”.

Executing the Community Project

The girls showed up last Thursday armed with supplies and a ton of energy. They were ready to get their markers out and start their cards and I struggled a bit at first to calm them down and get them to stop and listen to the guidelines. DOWNER ALERT! Nothing erases the smile of a girl holding markers and pipe cleaners than someone telling them that their card should be cheery but not say things such as “get well soon”, because these children that they would be sending cards too most likely were NOT going to be getting well soon. Yes, call me Eeyore.

The girls perked back up quickly though when I said that I had profiles of 14 different kids which included pictures of them, information about their condition, a list of their favorite things and interests, and information about their siblings if they had any.

I honestly thought that the girls would be split between wanting to make cards for the military versus the kids. I was wrong! All of the girls immediately started yelling “I want a kid!” and grabbing for a profile. Since I only had 14 profiles and we had 24 girls, some of them had to share a kid or some started on their cards for the military first.

The other coaches and I walked around while the girls were creating their cards to give them ideas on what to write, make sure that they were following the guidelines, and to help share the load of supplies between the girls. I broke up two fights over a book of stickers but besides that the girls shared very well.

While the girls were making their cards one of the girls was really excited to make her card for her “new friend” because the girl’s birthday was the same month as hers! Then she noticed that the girl was actually born the same year as her. Then the sad realization set in .. “wait….” She said. “This girl is only a little bit older than I am…” …. And I think I know the part she was thinking but didn’t say. “And she’s dying..”. Yes, so sad. :o( The girls really got into making the cards and there were so many cute ones created. In total the girls created 35 cards. We had 11 for our military service members and 24 kids for the Make A Child Smile Program!

Pop-Up Present Card

PC Happy Holidays Card

Cards For The Military

Disney Themed Card

Present Card

"We Have A Lot In Common" Cards

I think our community project was a great success and I think the girls had a lot of fun completing it!