Service Days

 November Service Days Part 2. 

The second service day was on Saturday November 17th working with the Epworth Foundation. They work every year putting together Thanksgiving baskets for those in need, delivering them by hand or by taxi. I arrived early in the morning and self-assigned into the assembly line.

 Each package contained a frozen turkey, yams, cranberry sauce, 2 boxes of mac and cheese, stuffing, rolls, cake mix, corn, gravy... all the Thanksgiving specials. I was on Mac and Cheese patrol, moving the boxes away from the frozen turkey as to not get them soggy and wet. Service at work! Here is a slideshow of last year's event. It was a much bigger event than I anticipated, and the number of volunteers that showed up was amazing.

Commemorating the spirit and generosity of "Daddy Bruce" Randolph, The Epworth Foundation and its generous sponsors have distributed more than 45,500 baskets of food to Denver-area families in need.

What Happens:

At midnight the Friday before Thanksgiving, 3 city blocks near Epworth will be closed off and a giant assembly line will be set up. Semi-trailers full of food will be hauled in by Wal-Mart. The food will be off loaded onto a conveyor system, where ove rthe next 18 hours hundreds of volunteers will help pack the food into boxes and the distribution will begin. Volunteers from Metro Cab will begin delivering food to the elderly and shut-in, while thousands of people will visit Epworth directly to receive their baskets. Community agencies will be present to communicate their services. More than 7,000 families will be helped.

Here is a slideshow of last year's event. It was a much bigger event than I anticipated, and the number of volunteers that showed up was amazing. 

Service Days

November Service Day Part 1. 

 Friday November 16th, AmeriCorps team CBPYT worked with Bright Beginnings in a service day to repaint their office interior and spruce up the space.

Bright Beginnings is a Colorado-based nonprofit organization providing early childhood education tools at no cost to parents. Materials focus from prenatal to birth to age three.

We spent all day taping, painting trim, moving boxes, eating bagels, and lining the walls with recycled newspaper and bonded as a team over paint fumes. 

It was nice to get to hear about what Bright beginnings does as an agency and feel like we were doing some benefit to the program. Some youth were able to volunteer as well, so it felt more like a community effort. Go Team!

 *side note* During lunch, I went to Falafel King. Which, I can honestly say blew my mind for a chain restaurant. The sauces were all non dairy and it was just what I needed for a break in the day.

November starts!

Annalise and I started our Independent Living Classes on the 5th at one of the youth housing programs we work with. We have about 5-10 youth that come each week. We have talked about what Independent Living Classes will be about, Nutrition, "What's Next" (after high school) and College 101, in addition to cooking Italian food. We have decided to make it International Year, and have a genre of cooking for each month. We made homemade pizza, chicken broccoli Alfredo  spaghetti and baked chicken. YUM! Next month we are diving into.. American cuisine. (we thought we would ease the kids into easy food before we spring falafel on them)

We also got to deep clean the kitchen in the basement... which was both good... and bad. Final outcome good though! Posters to come!

It's nice to have finally started IL classes instead of just talking about it for months. The work load for the class is not too bad, we have several binders at the office in which we can pull worksheets or ideas from. I enjoy cooking each week and seeing the kids eat and socialize.




November has been busy with meetings and working with some youth... along with rescheduling and... not meeting with youth. I was definitely warned about kids cancelling meetings and not showing up, but it is kind of disheartening knowing that I can help and support someone and not getting any take. I understand the issue of having one more social services person to talk to, but my role is more of a support and communicator for the youth. Bums me out that I work with 8 kids technically, but only meet with 4 consistently.

I have gotten into the groove of working in the Department of Human Services. Coming into the office, checking e-mail, attending meetings and documenting are things I have down pat. At times, the down time can be hard to fill, besides planning for our next Independent Living class, or month.

Other news... We have been dominating at trivia. We tried several places; Breckenridge, Rooster and Moon and Nicolo's Pizza. We seem to be best at Rooster and Moon.... (These are the two teams at Nicolo's on the 14th. 3rd and 4th. woohoo!)

More to come!