Today was the graduation day for MSP. It has been a learning experience for me because not only did I help out my community but I learned more about others than I would’ve ever known. What I would remember most about MSP was the day I went up and talked to a woman by the name of Julia Somers. She not only gave me an opportunity to voultneer at the NJ highlands Coalition but also helped me to establish connections with other charity’s who also could use volunteer services. MSP opened up many opportunity’s for me and for that I am grateful. Thank you to Robin, Yale, and Jay for pushing us to always do our best.

Today in our philanthropy class we mainly learned how to identify  and read tax returns. Now this might sound tedious but in reality it was actually kinda awesome. I mean how many high school students know what tax returns are? Much less how to read and identify them. This was beyond a valuable lesson I learned today and I will keep this lesson  with me forever.

During this weeks philanthropy class my group, Populous Terre,  had started to look into what we as a group are looking for. We looked for charities that deal with improving the environment. After, we discussed some of the  possible charities we wanted to invest into we came up with our fundraising idea. Our fundraising  idea was the 50/50 raffle and if we are approved  to go then I know we can definitely earn some much needed money for our dying environment. The only thing I fear is reaching out to organizations that reject our help and money because any cause to help the environment is costly and every dollar will help and to say no to a group of kids who want to help something near and dear to there heart. I feel it is just wrong and more importantly disrespectful to your organization name that was created to help the environment and not turn away those who want to help.

Today’s Philanthropy class was interesting to say in the least. In today’s class we had each divided into groups of 5 or 6 and were placed in a group depending on our common interests with our Mad Cards which we did last week. After being divided into our groups we introduced ourselves and each group member had three things with them representing who they were as a person. Now as we started this group activity I was somewhat familiar with all my group mates except for Xavier. Now as we went into discussion about our three items and why we chose them I learned that Will who I previously thought was into business and politics surprised me by stating that he cared mostly for the environment and wanted to be a bio-chemical engineer. But, that wasn’t all.Xavier, the group mate I knew nothing about told us that he was into anything that had his adrenaline pumping and actually it took a minute or two to process that because Xavier was well spoken and intelligent giving me the impression that maybe he was like me and liked to read but never would I have guessed him as an adventure seeker. In conclusion, I learned some things that I wouldn’t have guessed about people but for the most part I wasn’t really surprised with what the people cherished most in life and what represented them. – Sameer Ahmad

Today October 13, 2015 was the second official day of the main street philanthropy program. The program so far is going great and the thing the keeps me staying in the program besides the amazing administrators is a sense of curiosity of discovering what I can do for others and what I can learn about myself and others. In today’s program we used Make a difference cards and I can surely say that I learned some things about others and myself that I would have never expected. For instance, in the program with me is a friend of mine named Tori. Now today when using the MAD cards I picked environmental as my first choice because it held great importance to me and it environmental sciences is going to be my future career. After Tori had discussed her top choice she said that in the process of having the change she wants she wouldn’t be concerned with the environment at all. This sorta shocked me a little bit to think that even though we’ve been friends for a couple years she was still an enigma to me. What i’m hoping from this program is to learn different peoples perspectives and hopefully apply these perspectives one day in my future endeavors.