With my current action project, I went out for the first time and actually put my action plan in motion. On Saturday, November 13th, my partner and I went downtown with Kristy Blakeway to help the homeless. On the way there, we saw a lot of poverty and people struggling on the streets. We noticed some young people asking for water who appeared that they could still be in high school. Which was really eye-opening and shocking for us to see. We also made candy bags for the less fortunate people as a small treat for them and we had the opportunity to take someone out for lunch and learn about their story.
One success we had was that we were able to go out for the first time and actually make a positive impact. We also only had some time to make the candy bags in the car because that’s when our mentor suggested the idea, so we had to move quickly. However, my partner and I worked hard and finished all of the candy bags in the allotted time. Another accomplishment was finding someone to take out to lunch and learn about their life story. Well more like they found us because this man named Daniel was about to cross the street when we passed him, but he noticed I was handing out goodie bags and asked for one. Suddenly, a conversation began and Kristy offered to take him to lunch, to which he gladly agreed. On the way to Tim Hortons, he told us about his past and his experiences. We heard a lot of thrilling and fascinating tales about him which he was comfortable sharing.
Click Here to Learn More About His Unique Story And Our Entire Day With Him:
We All Want to Belong – BEYOND HELLO: Rekindling the human spirit one conversation at a time
Finding the right people to approach was one of the challenges we faced. Since many people did not want to interact with one another and some were using substances. We overcame this obstacle by observing peoples’ body language and the crowd they were in. We ended up meeting a lot of people who were thankful for the treats and we had pleasant conversations with them. Another challenge we faced was parting with Daniel because we all connected on a different level and it was difficult to leave him since we wanted to spend more time with him. You could also tell that Daniel was upset as we were leaving because he had finally made some friends, but Kristy gave him her phone number so he could contact us again and we could keep that connection.
The next step for our action project is that hopefully, we get to go out again and take someone else out for lunch and learn about their story because of how successful and effective our first run was. Maybe we can also track down Daniel and see what he’s up to. If we don’t have time to go out due to all the different schedules we have, my partner and I were thinking about making care packages for the homeless and giving them to Kristy to use or donating them. Any of those ideas will work because they all have a beneficial impact.
