Day Three!

Another day of small, organizational projects here at Camp Heartland. We started off the morning by unloading a donation of food from Sara Lee, which meant getting bundled up and braving the -2 degree weather (with a windchill in the negative teens!). Next we started prepping the camp facilities for Friday, when 100 local high school freshman (yes, that's 100 thirteen and fourteen year olds!) are coming to do a massive volunteer day as a part of their health class. That involved mopping the entire basement of the camp and then setting up enough tables and chairs.

We then moved on to what we thought would be a pretty simple project - testing out the art supplies in the arts and crafts room, to make sure they all worked (the 100 freshmen are going to be making birthday cards for the campers at one of their volunteer stations). That involved testing around 1000 markers to make sure they still worked, unclogging all the glue bottles and refilling them with glue, sharpening 100's of colored pencils, and then organizing the entire craft room. It wasn't the simple project that we imagined, but it was great, because all ten of us spent the entire morning in one room, joking around as we scribbled with markers and performed surgery to remove clots on glue bottle caps.

After lunch we split up to accomplish a few smaller tasks. Some of us folded laundry, some of us organized the quilts in the basement, some of us spackled dents in the wall from recliners during the summer, and some of us headed outside to load books into a van - One Heartland (the parent organization of Camp Heartland) gets so many donations that they donate what they can't use, which I think shows how interconnected service organizations are. We spent the rest of the afternoon back in the arts and crafts room, making holiday cards to send out to the families of the campers. Again, all of ten of us were in a room, singing to Christmas songs and generally having a really great time. I'm still amazed at how close a group of nine students and one advisor can get so close in such a short amount of time while doing service.

We sat around after dinner and did a short reflection, focusing on what service actually is. Kristen (my co-leader) and I felt that this was important to discuss, because it would be easy to think that sharpening colored pencils and setting up tables doesn't do anything to directly effect the children that come to camp in the summer. However, the fact that we can do this kind of jobs frees up Jill (again, the camp director) to be able to work on paperwork, phone calls, and all the types of things that allow camp to go on in the summer. No one on the trip thought that what we were doing was unimportant, which really speaks to the character of everyone on the trip. We also chatted about what made us decide to go on a Buck-i-Serv trip; I thought it was fantastic that most of our motivation was just because we all like to do service.

Reflection was followed by one of the most intense games of Catchphrase I've ever played, then more movie watching. Day Four (which is actually day) is our day off and our trip to the Mall of America - should be a good time.

Day Two!

Today was a much looooonger day of service here at Camp Heartland. We worked on a lot of organizational projects today, getting the camp back in order after a summer (and fall) of camp sessions. We organized a closet of a million different types of paint - I honestly had no idea there was so much variety, other than exterior/interior! We moved a whole closet of sleeping bags, and organized the entire "drama closet", which is essentially all of the costumes used all summer. And that was all before lunch!

After lunch, we braved the Minnesota winter for the first time, as half of the group moved shelves, televisions, and food from an outside storage facility into the camp. The rest of us worked on washing two solid days of dishes, since the kitchen's hot water heater had been broken the past two days. After we had finished working on organizing parts of the main camp, we moved out to the shower houses and organized all of the towels, sheets, and other laundry-related things out there. The winter weather here is cold, but (at least today), it seemed to be just as cold as winter in Ohio. Though, the wind chill tomorrow is supposed to be around -20, so we'll be staying inside all day tomorrow.

Tonight is another night of movies, hot chocolate, and getting to know each other better. Everyone on the trip has reached a nice level of comfort with each other; the conversation flows really easily and we usually wrap up each meal cracking up.

Day One!

Our first day at Camp Heartland was a relaxing one. We were allowed to sleep in, and then had a fantastic brunch. After that, Jill (the camp director), gave us an overview of the history of Camp Heartland. This was after a tour of the camp - it's a little like being at summer camp when we stay here, what with bunk beds and wooden nametags and such. Except, y'know, it's -2 degrees outside. After the tour we watched two films as a group - one which was a short documentary (produced by the founder of Camp Heartland) about a woman and her two sons and how a family lives with HIV/AIDS. The woman, a close friend to Camp Heartland founder Neil, was infected with the virus by her ex-husband, and passed the virus on to her youngest son. The film consisted of interviews with both sons and the mother, interspersed with scenes from their life; arguments over medications, the two boys playing together, and the mother discussing how she hoped to live the rest of her life.

The little boy with AIDS, Nile, was the first camper at Camp Heartland in 1993. Just this pass year, Jill informed us, he was married, with Neil being in his wedding. It was a nice reminder of how difficult HIV/AIDS is to manage on a daily basis, and also a reminder of how much medical treatment of the disease has progressed in 17 years. The second video was a slideshow of pictures and video from the camp sessions in the summer - a completely different experience from the first video. Jill also spoke to us about how One Heartland (the organization that manages the camp) has expanded to a family based camp in New York. and a two week session in Malibu, California. In addition, since their campers have grown so old (because fewer children are being born with HIV), they have expanded their focus to more groups of children with special needs, including camps for runaways from the Twin Cities, homeless children, children who have Crohn's disease, and children with severe allergies.

We spent the rest of the afteroon working on organizational projects around the camp:
- organizing the sheets, blankets, and towels for the main lodge
- organizing all the clothes that the camp has to give to campers who don't have enough clothes for camp
- organizing the closet of board games

After dinner, we had a little bit of group reflection, talking about our reactions to the films we watched and learning about the camp as well as talking about our experience on the trip so far. We then played Scategories as a group, and are now watching movies or working on some arts and crafts for the camp.

It's been great!

We're Here!

15 hours in a 12-passenger van, and we've arrive (all 10 of us) safe and sound at Camp Heartland! Not much more to say, other than I need to relax and get some sleep!

Last week!

Thursday was our last training session as a cohort of trip leaders. It was a relaxing, even slightly informal meeting. We went over some last minute details (where to pick up our van, where to pick up the sweatshirts for participants, etc.) and discussed reflection on the trip for a little bit. We ended the meeting by hearing a 3-5 minute presentation from every trip leader pairing on their trip. I loved it. I know my trip pretty well, because I was a participant last year, but it was so interesting to hear about all the other trips, which, honestly, I didn't know that much about. The only downer was hearing about how a lot of trips are going to go to the beach in their spare time - the weather forecast says it will be around a 7 degree windchill when we get to Minnesota!

This Saturday, the majority of the trip was able to meet up at Donato's and just hang out; it's nice to get to know people on your trip before you spend 14 hours in a van with them. Everyone seems really relaxed, I think it's going to be a great trip.

We leave on Saturday at 6:00 am! I'll be updating the blog a lot more once we get there, complete with pictures and everything.

On Being An Expert Citizen

This past Thursday, we had Dr. Don Stenta (stenta.1@osu.edu) speak to the trip leaders. In addition to developing leadership courses and a minor in leadership for the University, Dr. Stenta also has an appointment within the John Glenn School of Public Affairs. He talked with us (not at us, which is always nice) about the "link between leadership in service."

His main message was that just doing service is contributing to the status quo. Those who volunteer, especially college students, hae to do more work to understand and changed the social problems of our country. This involves understanding politics and how policy is made; I think this is something that college students avoid doing because we already have so much on our plate. We can barely handle o-chem, so on top of that, many of us don't want to put the effort into understand the complicated framework behind government policy. However, as Dr. Stenta emphasized, this is what's essential to truly helping: we have the resources out there to solve problems, but do we have the priorities? The question he posed was "Why is it okay to pay a football coach 3 million dollars? How many homes would that build? How many meals would that serve?" Dr. Stenta points to the fact that we lack the knowledge about how the system works to explain why our priorities are so out of whack.

We watched this youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwVVu54z5ys) about the American Civil Literacy test, and then took a civic engagement quiz, to begin to understand out own connection to American policy and political activism (which has a radical connotation, but can be as simple as wearing a button to support a certain candidate). All the trip leaders also recieved a list of ideas to increase civil and electorial activity, which is what we're going to focus on after the trip. What conversations/actions can occur AFTER the trip that make this more than just a one-shot service opportunity?

20 days until we leave for Camp Heartland!

Two week update

For the past two weeks, there hasn't been a lot of planning concerning the trip going on. The make-up of the trip participants has changed slightly, just because people's plans have changed, but the new participants seem to be a lot of fun. Two weeks ago, our training focused on getting to know our co-leader better by playing a version of the Newlywed Game. Kristen and I were SO close to winning!

This past week, we had representatives from the Multicultural Center (http://mcc.osu.edu) come and speak to us about the different identities that all of us have, whether it be race, gender, socioeconomic level, sexual orientation, or anything else. Understanding our own identities helps us to become better leaders, and also will help to realize that every person on our trip - participants or the people we work with at Camp Heartland - have their own set of personal identities that define who they are. It was a really great chance to get to learn a lot about our co-leader, in addition to learning a lot about some leaders from the other trips. It's cool how the trip trainings have created a community between the leaders for all of the trips.

Outside of trainings, all of the leaders for all of the trips have had to write to op-ed pieces in the form of letters to the editor; one concerning the issue that our trip is addressing, and one on an issue of our choosing. I wrote mine on how poverty changes the way that HIV/AIDS affects people and another on how public schools don't deserve much of the criticism that is leveled against them. These op-eds will be used in next week's training, which is on being an "expert citizen."