Day 2 Perspective by Mary Logan, Cory, and Victoria

Never in a million years would we have thought that watching a documentary at 9:00a.m could be so interesting. Today, our group had the pleasure of volunteering with the Family and Children’s Place in Louisville, Kentucky. Our day started with rapidly fixing our PB&J sandwiches while downing a cup of joe. Once we arrived to the site, we met with Jennifer who is a program director for the organization and Micah who is the Director of Development. They started by informing us on Family and Children’s Place and what they do for the Louisville  community. The mission of this organization is to help homeless families find and maintain stable housing, provide case management for the families, and provide basic living necessities. During the discussion, we discovered many startling statistics about poverty in the United States. One in five people in the United States under the age of 18 are abused. Additionally, being homeless doubles your chances of being physically abused and triple your chances of being sexually abused. Homeless people are also shown to age much more rapidly due to the stressors of their lives. Knowing these facts made us that much more motivated to help in their cause.

Hi all, this is Mary Logan! Today, we watched a documentary called “American Idealist- Sargent Shriver”. This documentary related to our topic of wealth distribution awareness because it covered Shrivers’ mission to end poverty in our nation and depicted practical activism. It went into detail about the civil rights movement as well as the War on Poverty. It also showed what progress was made during that time in order to offer hope for our nation as we tackle these issues in our future. After watching this documentary, I felt that I had been thoroughly educated about the problems with poverty that our world faces, and what actions we can take as a society to work towards bettering these issues. Afterwards, we had a lot of thought-provoking conversations that really opened my mind to think about our trip’s theme in ways that I had never even considered before. I felt that watching this documentary helped our group dig deeper into the problems that we face as a society and gain a new respect for each other. One of the most important aspects of this ASB trip is to be able to bring back what we learn to the local Knoxville community, and I feel that what we were educated on today will strongly contribute to that. I think that our group had a lot of great bonding experiences today, and I look forward to serving and learning with this amazing group of people for the rest of the week!

Hello, beautiful people! This is the sassy, yet classy, Cory Kleppe. After watching the documentary and discussing the implications of the film, we traveled to Walmart to buy supplies for people in need with Jennifer. As a part of their mission, they provide people in need with bare necessities like clothes and blankets. We gathered supplies such as shampoo, conditioner, lotions, and toilet paper to help restock. After purchasing these items, we went to Family and Children’s Place’s storage facility to store our goods and reorganize their stock. While we did not directly work with those struggling with poverty, helping to organize and store goods can go a long way in helping the workers accomplish their goals. Feeding someone can be beneficial for a few hours, but this indirect service can benefit all those involved for weeks to come. Every day that the group works together, I notice that our teamwork continues to grow. As Jennifer told us what needed to be done, we worked together to accomplish all of her tasks while having fun doing it. One of my favorite parts of the day was seeing the smile on Jennifer’s face after we finished. She was overjoyed to see how organized her facility was after we worked on it. As our days progress, I am happy to see how our teamwork increases as we work together towards a common goal.

Switching it up once again! This is Victoria Webb, also known as the tomato dicing queen. After we finished up our service for the Family and Children’s Place, we went back and had an eye-opening conversation with the entire group. Throughout this conversation, we explored our own identities, encouraged to find similarities among the group, as well as to recognize and validate the differences in experiences of others. During the second activity, in order to learn more about our team members, we were asked about times where we felt included on campus, times when we did not, and asked about our own biases. This allowed us to learn more about our group and to learn and work through our own biases we held about the trip. We then had talks about how our own biases and identities could affect our biases and experiences. This allowed others to learn about the terms of intersectionality and privilege if they were unsure on how privilege works.

This day has a huge educational components to provide a solid foundation and background. This allows us to better understand the social issues at hand. Through our Wealth Distribution Awareness trip, there is a huge emphasis on awareness. Without it, how would be able to let others know of the social issues that exist? Being aware helps spread awareness, our first and foremost goal of the trip.