Volunteering Reflection
For my volunteering for this semester I worked with the Achieve! Minneapolis at their Roosevelt High School location. Achieve’s mission that I helped aid in through my volunteering is:
“…to galvanize community resources to help all Minneapolis Public School students succeed in school and become productive members of society.� -http://www.achieveminneapolis.org/
At Roosevelt we worked more on the Achieve! Career and College Initiative, which focuses on helping students, plan their futures after high school. One of the head leaders at the Roosevelt location, Mike, came up with a project, called “My Life Project�, to help the kids understand what paths were available to the kids and what life would be like with certain decisions they would make. Kids would basically draw a situation that they would hypothetically have after high school out of a hat. Once they found out if they were going to be a high school drop-out, community college bound, private or public college bound, or entering the workforce, they had to start planning their life. They would have to choose a college and what kind of degree they would obtain if they were going to college, or what type of job they would be working at straight out of high school. They also then had to find a residence that they could afford with their wages and that would be suitable for their family if they were given that situation and all the costs that came with. So all together they had to plan the life after high school and how they could best handle and manage their situation they were given. As a volunteer, every week I helped the kids work through this project and help them mostly with calculating and managing their finances. Every week their would be a couple classes that would come in and work on this project and I could see that with every progressive week that the kids started to realize what situations had it better off and which they most likely wanted to have for themselves. At the end of the semester the kids would compile everything that they had done and figured out for their situation and make a power point to show the rest of the class so that everyone could see and realize what certain living styles people had to live with the situation they were given. This “My Life Project� is worked on in a certain progressive manner throughout the four years of these kids’ high school careers to help them realize what the best path is for them.
Not only did I help every week I was at Roosevelt with the “My Life Project� but I also helped kids with math, science and english homework when needed. Overall I enjoyed working with the Achieve! Minneapolis program this semester and would like to work with them in the near future.
-http://www.achieveminneapolis.org/