MAB New Orleans Children's Trip

MAB New Orleans Children's Trip 

Serve Don't Help 

While humbly serving the New Orleans community at The Edible Schoolyard, we picked up a few major keys about gardening, sustainability, about how to promote growth among youth. Not only were we able to serve the children at the various Edible Schoolyard locations, they were able to share their knowledge and love of gardening with our group. We all have learned about immensely about how to garden, what is healthy, and how to encourage sustainability in the community. 

Communicate Love

We learned about communicating love through the people we worked with at all three of our service sites. At the children's hospital, our contact point Nancy showed us how to communicate love by being so kind to us. She went out of her way to welcome us and introduce us to everyone in the hospital and we felt so appreciated. At the Ronald McDonald house, we learned that we could communicate love by making the house comfortable for future guests. Cleaning the house showed that we cared about the people who rely on Ronald McDonald as a place to stay. Finally, the edible schoolyard showed us we can communicate love of our community by taking care of it. The garden we worked in was built to be sustainable and serve the community. The work we put it will benefit the community in the long run. 

This Is It

For the "this is it" principal, we immersing ourselves in the New Orleans culture fully. We were continuously trying authentic food, searching for local places to try, and exploring the town. We were given the opportunity to experience the unique culture by our volunteer coordinator, Nancy. She invited us into her home for an authentic crawfish boil dinner with her family. Each participant eagerly tried the crawfish, shrimp, and crab (even if they all had eyes). We feel that through immersing ourselves into the culture, we were about to live fully in this unique experience. 

Unplug

Being unplugged during this trip not only gave us the chance to be more involved and active in our service, it also gave us the chance to grow closer as a group. By putting our phones aside during meals or group actives, we were able to have conversations that weren't blocked by things like Facebook or Twitter. By unplugging at our different service sites we were able to get a huge hands on experience and really put all our attention on how we could help to better the children in the community. We were given the chance to really live in the moment and appreciate the things around us and the conversations we were able to have bu unplugging. 

Be Gumby

Throughout our trip we've all shown what it meant to be gumpy. We've had many instances arise where we could have said no, but we got our hands dirty and turned it into a good time. One situation was at the edible schoolyard while weeding in a gated area a snake slithered by and startled our participates. Even though being near snakes can make someone nervous our participates got over their fear to finish the job for edible schoolyard. During our service our participates have incorporated numerous ways to make the jobs a fun learning experience while bonding with each other and members of the local community.

Poco A Poco

Little by little, we dug a big hole. 

This week at the edible schoolyard we learned the true meaning of poco a poco. We had the opportunity to learn about and construct a rain garden. To accomplish this we had to start digging out an area around a storm drain. At the beginning it seemed that our efforts did not appear to make a difference, however, by the end of day two all of our hard work paid off by sending off a traitor full of dirt. Now the rain garden is ready to be planted by the next group of volunteers. When this garden is finished it will lead to a more sustainable, self-watering area. This will also help debris that would normally go into the storm drain and can contribute to reducing the amount of money spent by the city of New Orleans to store this excess water.  In the end, our teamed learned that little by little the impact can be greater than imagined.

Bring It Home 

This experience has taught us immeasurable life lessons worthy of integrating into our lives back home. We were able to see that even though many of the people we worked with might've have had low-paying jobs that weren't quite so easy, they still went about them with he utmost enthusiasm and passion. It was truly humbling and something that we would love to emulate in the near future.  The trip also taught us that it isn't always necessary to travel to do good things within a community. Our community could easily benefit from things such as an edible schoolyard or Ronald McDonald house. We have even talked about what we learned from the edible schoolyard and imitating that in Columbia. Overall this experience has been so rewarding and taught us to bring it home. *mic drop*