Dearborn Reflection

During eighth grade, I was contacted by the University of Michigan Dearborn SIFE program. I was challenged to come up with a product used by students that needed to be improved. SIFE used my idea and it brought me into the U of M family. For two years, they used this project and I was heavily involved in it. I attended summer programs, meetings and planning committees. After that two years passed, it was declared that the SIFE program was dissipating and along with it the community service opportunity. I did not want to lose this so with the help of the UMich faculty, a year later, I was matched with the Alpha Kappa Psi Business Fraternity. From there, we tried implementing the same program that had worked with SIFE. Although it worked, I did not see the summer program participants gaining much from it because most of it had to do with things such
as starting a business, creating Linkedin profiles and things they would not implement for years. I decided to sit down with the coordinator Professor Mike Callahan and reinvigorate the program. We decided to wipe the slate clean and start over.
We kept the basic business principles there, develop a personal brand, call to action, marketing and networking and applied it to college applications. This newly invigorated program offered a wide range of opportunity to high school students to interact with college students, learn how to market themselves and get into a great college. A planning committee was immediately formed and we began planning the process. Although there were many triumphs in the program, after a while it began to fall out as the college students could not volunteer their time as much and this summer we did not run the program. All together, the program was a success but it was limited to the amount of time that the college students could put into it and the interest the high school students had for it and eventually led to its failure. From this failure, I have learned a lot about running events and programs and foreseeing future issues and it has made me more efficient at planning small projects. Last year, I organized a senior citizen prom for the senior citizens at West Lake Senior Citizen home in commerce township. I led a small team of high schoolers to organizing and running the prom for over 200 residents and 120 high schoolers. The prom consisted of a social hour, dinner, dancing and the crowning of our King and Queen. The event was an amazing success and it drove me to really wanting to be involved in my community. We are running it again this year.
In addition to being involved with the senior center, on a smaller scale I have been donating to the humane society for my birthday each year. Instead of asking my friends and family for birthday gifts, I ask that they bring things that can be donated to the humane society, such as towels, news papers, food and toys. It brings me such joy to help the animals at the shelter. When faced with the task to find an organization to donate to, the answer was obvious.
Each year, UM Dearborn hosts a community service project on Martin Luther King day. This year, the organization that we helped was called …………… It is an organization dedicated to helping children who have been abused. After an abused child has been taken into governmental protection, they are first taken to the hospital where they are assessed for mental, physical and sexual abuse. They are told to remove their clothes and are wrapped in a white sheet to wait for their doctors. It can be a cruel and humiliating process. ……………………. Creates blankets that are delivered to the hospitals where these children are assessed. Instead of being wrapped in the white sheet, they are able to look through the drawer of blankets and choose whichever one they would like. This helps them to feel more comfortable during the examination. Additionally, when the child is removed from their home, most of the time they are unable to bring anything with them. The blanket that they choose becomes theirs and having something of your own is also very
comforting.
The organization needs help making the blankets that are to be donated. They supply people with the products necessary to make the fleece blankets and asks that the people hold on to the scraps. The scraps that are not used in the blanket itself are used to fill dog beds for rescued dogs at the local shelter. This organization would be great to use as a community service project for the telluride house.
It would be easy to plan the project as the woman who runs the organization used to teach at the University of Michigan and is still strongly involved in the community. I have worked with her before and I have all of her contact information. Telluride would contact her and ask that the necessary materials be supplied to the house, or the house could run a fundraiser and purchase the materials needed. From there, making the blankets are easy. You take two sheets of fleece and lay them one over the other. From there, you cut one by 4 inch slits around the border of the fabric and tie them into knots.
This community service project would benefit the community by helping children who are abused. This problem is easily looked over as Ann Arbor is a particularly wealthy area but it is fact that over 700,000 children are abused in America annually. Helping these children will give them a chance at a better future and could possibly create more U of M applicants in the future. In addition to helping the children, telluride would also be helping local animals and supporting the animal shelters.