Six months

I'm halfway through my year of VISTA service and I can't believe how fast time has passed. It's starting to feel like all of my projects are beginning to take off and that I am building some real capacity at this point.

I had a meeting with the Speakers Lab at Butler University last week to plan out the speakers bureau training and I can't wait to see how it turns out. Right now its look like like the training will be broken into two sessions, morning and afternoon on a weekend and the girls participating will get the chance to have a campus tour and share coffee at the student union with 'real live' college students!

The next volunteer engagement event will take place sometime next month and is looking like it will be an international food demonstration. The first event was really successful and the focus group gave me some great ideas to build the rest of the on program so hopefully I'll be able to nail down a date later this week for the event.

Where did these classy photos come from you ask? Well last week was Girls Inc.'s big event, Touchstone! The theme was woman's right to vote and the summer camp girls rocked it! All the VISTAs got new fun polo's from the state office and we showed our Americorps pride in vibrant Red White and Blue. We even got to take some prom pictures with the balloons.

These were some of the amazing yard sign decorations Ashley designed! I have one in my office now!




Maddy at Check-In. Everyone got to make themselves a "Vote for me!" sticker as their name badge.




I worked voter registration, selling 'ballots' so guests could vote on the Girls Right they felt was most important. The right to have economic literacy won with a overwhelming results.

Summer camp ended on friday and you can already hear the silence echoing throughout the building without the girls. I'm going to miss being called Miss Amis' daughter (I don't know who started that rumour but it stuck), having my fortune told with playing cards, and mancala challenges, but I think I'll miss the hellos and hugs the girls gave once they got to know me most. Yeah for being strong, smart and bold!

Summer Camp

Girls Inc summer camp is well into its 6th week and today the girls at camp learned about economic literacy by opening their own businesses and competing to win the 'girl bucks' we were given to make purchases. The camp staff also had their own booths featuring the stock market (where you could buy stock in Mcdonalds and The Limited Too) and the bank (where interest compounded every 15 minutes).

With my ten 'bucks' I received a hand massage, a chocolate shake, candy, a fantastic pink bracelet, and got my nails painted with blue and with polk dots. Overall it was a great morning of shopping.

Seeing the summer camp girls puts a face on what Girls Inc is all about and I know that I will be sad when camp ends. I've been able to spend time visiting with the summer camp girls and recording their stories, a couple of them even give me hugs when I come down to visit. :) It's great to see how they are all so strong, smart and bold and hear all their opinions on wome'ns rights, school uniforms, the definition of beauty and their excellent marketing tactics.

"I am respected among my peers"

Tonight I met up with a group of fellow VISTA's and Girls Inc. co-workers to wish Emmeline good luck as she completes her year of VISTA service, which lead to a conversation about what it means to be successful.

Emmeline said that when you know someone is successful when they claim that they are 'respected among their peers'. What exactly does that mean and does someone tap you on the should and tell you 'fyi, your peers respect you today,' therefore you have hit the top and there's no where left for you to go. For that matter who gives anyone the right to state that their peers respect them, shouldn't only your peers make that statement, and probably when you are far out of earshot.

Personally I think that you are successful when you are happy and fulfilled with life. I feel successful after a yoga class where I challenged myself, or when I am reflecting on my VISTA service, or even after cooking a meal that just tastes amazing.

It's been another crazy couple of months preparing for summer camp, focus groups, and the speakers bureau and I can't believe that I am already entering 5 months of my year of service. I have been spending a lot of time researching GII history trying to find a photo that would be good for the current summer girls to pose as in honor of GI's 40th birthday.

I love doing this kind of research, history is so intriguing and its neat to see how things have really changed over the years.

I've also gotten the opportunity to sit in on some of the summer camp programming and hear stories from the girls first hand. Its been awesome to hear their steadfast opinions on school uniforms, fast food lunches, and driving laws and recognizing how well versed and opinionated they all are.

Today the girls participated in a voting activity where they cast their ballots about if schools should require PE or not, the overwhelming response was yes they should because PE helps people become healthy at a young age and combats obesity.

Fourth of July is next week and I can't wait to see how Indy celebrates our Independence!