Mizzou Alternative Breaks Blog: Nashville

This weekend upon arriving in Nashville we were able to spend time with Justin Shephard and his wife Claire at their home before starting our service days. On Monday morning we left Shep's house and headed to SmART Supplies where we were greeted by Laurel and Kyle, the managers of the store, plus the three volunteers, Amy, Christie, and Mary Ann. SmART supplies is a local non profit organization that runs off of donations from the community which they sell as art supplies. The profits from their sales are donated to help adults with intellectual disabilities in the community as well as helping to employ adults with intellectual disabilities in their own shop.

After introductions we split up into groups of three to paint, deep clean and organize the store and sort through retail processing items. While working with them we learned that Laurel gave up part of her salary to employ Kyle full time because she knew that the store would benefit more from having two full time employees rather than just one. We also learned that Amy and her 10 year old daughter Mary Ann work as volunteers in the store every Tuesday and Saturday. Throughout the day we not only had the appreciation from the full time staff but also from the part time volunteers who have dedicated so much of their time and effort as well to this amazing organization. After a couple hours of work in the morning we came back together for a lunch break which was donated by Jets Pizza. Not only did we get a delicious free meal, we were also easily entertained by a cardboard cut out of a monkey, in which we all snapped our best "monkey face".

After some more work in the afternoon all of us came together for one final project— organizing and cleaning out the processing room. Our work here was incredibly rewarding because we were actually able to see how much progress we made from the beginning of the day to the end and got to see first hand how much our work in just 8 short hours actually changed how their business will be able to run. The long day was rewarded with some delicious Sonic, in which one of our members had never been to before. Not only did we sip on some wonderful slushies, we got to share the family size mozzarella sticks which really seemed to bring us together as a family. While navigating our way through Nashville, we stumbled upon our permanent home for the week, St. Augustine's Chapel, tucked away in the heart of Vanderbilt University's greek town. Nestled between Delta Delta Delta sorority and Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, our church quickly became our home as we were introduced to the staff as well as the wifi password. Although dinner wasn't ready until around 9:00 pm, Laura, Brittany and Sarah gave the rest of us in the group an opportunity to bond and get to know each other so much more. To top it off they cooked us an amazing mouth watering meal of chocolate chip pancakes, cheesy eggs, biscuits and bacon!

After dinner we were able to reflect on the long day of work we had as well as prepare for our volunteer work tomorrow at Thistle Farms. Although we are not entirely sure what tomorrow's work will bring, we are eager to embrace it with open minds and expectations. Attached below are some of the awesome pictures from today that were told about in this blog, hope you enjoy!