By Amy
At the October 20th LearnServe meeting, appropriately titled “Finding Your Cause”, the Fellows talked about the issues we are concerned about and what we want to do about it. We then filled out a form that helped us organize our thoughts about our cause. After completing the form we discussed our ideas within our groups. We then participated in a “speed meeting” activity where we met with another Fellow and briefly talked about our ideas.
I really enjoyed listening to my peers and learning about the great ideas they had. It was interesting to see how widely some of our ideas varied. Likewise, it was also helpful to discover whose social venture ideas were similar to mine. It was also beneficial to listen to other people’s feedback on my idea for my social venture.
My idea centers on the issue of children living in poverty in most third world countries. Children all over the world enjoy playing sports and participating in other recreational activities. However, many of them don’t have the proper resources, such as clothing. On the other hand, many of us are blessed with the opportunity to play on our schools’ teams or clubs. Each season, we receive a team shirt or jersey. However, we rarely wear the jersey after the season and it hangs, forgotten, in our closets. My venture would gather the sports jerseys we no longer wear to be donated and essentially “recycled” to others who need it. I also hope to raise more awareness about these underprivileged children in my school and community through fundraisers, clothing drives and video announcements.
Overall, I really enjoyed this LearnServe meeting because it was the first time we discussed what we really want to do for our venture and what social change we hope to bring about. It was very productive and it helped me get to know the other Fellows in my cohort better. We also got our very own LearnServe business cards which gave me extra enthusiasm for starting my venture!