Bella Anam’s
DIGITITAL PORTFOLIO
SOPHOMORE INSPIRE WEEK
Manna Soup Kitchen, Durango, CO
Project Description:
Sophomore Inspire Week (SIW) is a week-long experience to go out into the community and participate in a service project that has meaning to you.
I chose Manna Soup Kitchen, an organization that not only offers gourmet food to those in need (whether homeless or penniless, etc.), but also a wide array of documentation and application services. We chose to help with the Backpack Program, this program allows students who don't have food over the weekends to bring home a bag of non-perishable food items to be able to eat without having meals from school. This program was less successful than usual, Manna has enough to feed 400 students, yet they were only serving 200.
So we interviewed roughly 8 schools in the area who participate or have participated in this program, and got a lot of data to how this program can improve so that it can be more applicable. We discovered a large stigma surrounding food-insecurity and poverty, which may be why so few have been using the services of this program. So we created a big summary of the changes we believe Manna can make to improve this program, and sent it to them to review.
It was complex and mental labor intensive, but confirmed my ability to solve complex issues.
Presentation:
Reflection:
Big Takeaways
One thing that I remember is that I really enjoyed the food. When working at Manna, they gave us free food at lunch! But you would never guess that it was free. It was a fullcourse, gourmet, warm experience every single day. On the first day, we ate pizza and a bunch of salad and chocolate. The pizza that we ate was going to be thrown away if it were not for the hospital donating it. It tasted delicious, and it was free. Good food, with meaning. This reawakened the culinary poet in me. Everything just fits into place when I feel so invested in the moment, especially when it is a sensuous experience. Food has just always given that sensuous experience to me. That’s the biggest thing that I’ve taken with me, it reminded me of where I come from and how I really don’t need to stress about all this profit for security thing as much as I need to indulge in the sweet pleasures of textures and experiences that I have right now, at this moment. So my goal, coming back to school, is to simply live life and enjoy the beautiful moment. Slow down, Bella, you don’t have to drift in the fastlane like everyone else. This is a lovely reminder of the fact that High School only happens once, and I should really enjoy these small moments while I have them. This goes for life too, as the things we take for granted are also to hold big gratitude for.
Connections Between School and Work
Many of the professional and time-management skills I’ve learned here at school were very effective, and these skills I’ve learned at Manna will also be useful coming back to school. I found myself being very focused and to-the-point during this project. I was thinking realistically. We had an idea about making a film to show the schools to reduce stigma that surrounds food-insecurity, but I thought about how we only had 2-3 days to create it, and, how would we get all the schools to show it? Not to mention, we were suffering a big creative block for interesting script ideas for this concept. So with these logistical points in mind, we focused on what Manna could change and avoided the big stress that would have came with trying to achieve something that the circumstances wouldn’t give us ability for. One skill that I learned at Manna was to slow down and take a moment to observe things in with my senses. On Friday, the last day, I took a few minutes to stand outside and take in the admittedly amazing view that came with our office. I just breathed and enjoyed looking at it. It reminded me of my sensuality. And this will be useful in school to come back to the moment, rather than drifting along the fast currents that suggest panic. It’s a good reminder to stay present and just notice how lucky I am to be where I am as I am.
Time Management: How effective were you at time and task management during this project? What kinds of structures worked for you, where did time management become more difficult? What did you notice about HOW you worked when you had big chunks of work time?
Even though I came across some bumps in the road, I managed my time very effectively. On the first day we were just getting used to the organization, reflecting on the problems at hand, and formulating a plan. This day was to make a plan on how to manage time, which we managed quite well. However, this day was difficult for me, and observably all of us, because we just wanted to make something happen but didn’t know how to yet. We spent time trying to figure out how to do things we never actually ended up doing, like the The next day, I missed due to personal circumstances. But when I came back, it was easy to fit and effectively help my group and bring up good ideas. On this day, I helped interview several schools, and wrote an entire report for Park Elementary in just somewhere around an hour because I was so focused. I am very pleased with my time management, I think I used it very well. I am proud of how this project went and my role within it.
Connections to YouScience
I did not feel that my YouScience results were supremely accurate or newly groundbreaking, so it’s hard to draw a connection to this project from this information. (My highest skill was being artistic, which is true, but YouScience also told me that I do not make connections between two things very easily, which is not very true. The careers that were recommended for me were also things that I likely would never choose, like a garden architect). But I definitely noticed the skills that I know within myself being very prevalent in this experience, whether known my YouScience or not. Like collaboration, idea-generation, and creativity. This helped me a lot in this project, because I gave all that I could give, and it was easy because these are just my skills. But when all was said and done, I did not see a connection between my YouScience results and this experience, and I do not see much connection between YouScience and my life or what I want to do in life. YouScience was not made for me
Advice to Future Sophomores
The biggest advice I have to incoming sophomores is to have an open mind, and use your gifts as much as possible. I know I felt stuck a few times, I felt like my group was not where I belonged, like it was hard to make progress in some areas. This was a big issue to try and help solve, but we did so by being open-minded. We could have said, “This is too complex for a sophomore in highschool to solve,” but what made it possible was not believing it was impossible. This is a good narrative for life; I heard this quote once, “Whether you think you can or you cannot, you are right.” Maybe you’ll want to just sleep the whole week, maybe it’s not an inspiring Inspire Week at all. Or maybe you’ll feel like you chose the wrong one, and maybe you just don’t want to do the work. But the thing is, you are given this opportunity for a reason. Do what you will with it, but my best advice is to try your best to be open, find points where it connects to you, and contribute to your group as much as possible. Don’t be afraid to lead a little too, offer your gifts! No one else can be just like you, there never has been and never will be. You can’t offer yourself by trying to be like someone else. You are special, and deserve to be heard, and do what you do best. You can find yourself.