It is unreal to me that I’m already halfway done with my time here at Seeds of Caring. I’ve enjoyed my experience here very much, and the entire staff has welcomed me in with open arms. It has been a great summer so far. This week technically marks my sixth week with the organization, since I started a week early due to a vacation I have coming up in about a week.

This week was similar the last few we have had. This was the last week of the first summer session of Kindness Corps, and today (Thursday) we finished with our last camp, minus one camp session that is being made up tomorrow afternoon. We taught the campers about hunger and the unhoused this week, and what we can do as a community for those who are unhoused and may be struggling with food.

We taught the kids about this subject, and then had them decorate small paper bags with inspirational phrases like “you matter” or “you shine bright”. With these bags, we placed 3 different kinds of snacks in each and created small snack packs for food pantries around Columbus and the areas surrounding. It was a little difficult for the kids to understand that these snacks were not for them, they were for people who need them more. They eventually understood the purpose of what we were doing. They were even excited to take their very own bags home to decorate and fill with snacks so they can donate the pack or keep it in their grown up’s car to hand out to people they see asking for help around their neighborhood.

Every week it has been so interesting and fun to see how kids react to these important, serious, and sometimes complicated issues going on in their own communities. I have loved seeing how responsive and communicative they are about their own experiences and comments about how they feel on the subject.

I also had a meeting with one of the programs coordinators to talk about the Civic Engagement Anywhere Project I have been working on with her. We discussed more ideas for the project, and we are planning on filming an introduction video for the project for people to see before they start.

We start another session of camp next week and we will teach all the Kindness Corps lessons to another group of kiddos!