During this week’s class we did an exercise called the brown paper bag exercise. For this everyone was supposed to bring in tree items that either meant a lot to them or described them in some way. All of the tree items had to be small enough to fit in a brown paper bag. My three items that i brought in was a dog collar, my cross necklace, and a handmade bracelet. The dog collar stood for my love for animals and my involvement in non-profits to help out animals. Also the collar represents my foster puppies since that was the first collar of my foster puppies. The next thing was my cross necklace. I brought this in because of involvement in my church and love of what i do to help there and love of my church family there. And lastly is the handmade bracelet. This bracelet is did not make my self but it represents my love for being crafty and trying to make things that look cool to me instead of just buying them first.

Having listened and watched everyone present their three objects gave me a new insight on what they are like. It showed me that I am similar to some of these people that I thought I had nothing in common with.

In week two we all got put into our groups that we will be working with for the next couple weeks. I ended up getting my third choice which was hunger. I’m interested in finding out what I can learn from this new experience since I have never do anything like this before. In my group there is Jordie, Annie, Taylor, Logan and Dylan. During our first meeting as a group we brainstormed group names and ideas. Even though most of our team was not there we still came up with good ideas and names. Both Annie and Charlotte have worked with an organization working with hunger so that is one of our top choices but we are still looking at others too. I’m excited to keep on researching and working together to become a successful group. I’m also looking forward to our activity next class, the brown bag activity, and learning more about the people in philanthropy.

I am really excited to see what i can get out of this experience and to see what I can also show other people about the things that I am interested in. Our first activity that we did which i thought was interesting was using the MAD cards. When I was choosing six cards I had a little bit of a difficult time choosing them but even more of a difficult time choosing my top three. There were some cards that i knew i defiantly was interested in working with and then on the other hand there were some that I think are very important but I did not want to work with as much as others. my top three that i ended up choosing were Animal Care, Children and Youth Services, and Hunger. All which i think are very important causes, but one stuck out to me the most and that was Animal Care. A couple other things that i thought was cool about the MAD cards was discussing everyone’s opinions and finding out more about them that i had not known before. the other thing that i thought was cool was when i was discussing them with my mom. My mom also chose Animal Care just like me , but she also chose houses which was also one of my top 6 choices that I almost chose for my top three too. Her last one doesn’t surprise me, she chose medical research, which is her job.

I hope to gain knowledge about what Non-profits really are and how to choose the best one. I am excited to get to go through the process with my group since most kids/high school students don’t get this opportunity. I am also excited about working together to brainstorm ideas about how to help the non-profit that we end up choosing.