Wednesday was another early morning. We worked with Open Arms to deliver meals to about 5 individuals. The facility was very well put together I thought. There was no interaction with the people that we helped though. While it was something good that we did, it didn’t stand out in my mind.
The rest of the day we had free so we went to the Guthrie Theatre and walked on the endless bridge. After we went to the U of M. It was a beautiful campus but I did feel kind of out of place with my Jawhawk sweater on… ROCK CHALK! The people were very friendly though and their equivalent of Mass St was this place called “Dinky Town.” It was full of shops and restaurants. It was also a stone’s throw away from campus So it would be very accessible to sit down at a coffee shop in between classes.
Thursday was our earliest morning. This day we were working with the Aliveness Project which is a Minnesota based community center for those who are HIV + Our group was very inspired with the work that they did here. It wasn’t just a place to get information on their disease. It was a place that donated food to them, served 10 hot meals a week, set them up with housing, offered prevention services, counseling, acupuncture, massages and endless amounts of other services, all free to the members. We were helping with their “Dine Out for Aids” campaign that they have every year. On April 26th over 180 restaurants will donate anywhere from 20-100% of their profits to the Aliveness Project. To help them out we cleaned and ironed aprons, stuffed envelopes, folded papers, and a variety of other tasks that gave me paper cuts.
This day was our longest day of work by far, but it was also very rewarding. We got to sit and work with some of their regular volunteers, even a professional Santa Claus! We got to hear the stories of some of the members who were HIV + and how they dealt with the virus. We were also open to ask any questions we had so we got to be very informed of the disease.
Also this was #teamrainbow day so we all wore coordinating hues of the rainbow, It was kind of awesome, not going to lie.
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