Author: Ben, Spring 2021 YSEP Member (Junior) YSEP is one of the most valuable programs I have ever taken part in. The community feeling that the program leaders are able to bring is really impressive considering we are all on Zoom. The guest speakers that presented were insightful, but most importantly, they were interesting and thorough. YSEP discusses the reality of family homelessness, a serious problem that affects many people, and delivers the information in a way that really sticks with me personally. Not only did I learn a lot from the presentations, but also from the homework assignments that I completed. Assignments were posted in our Google Classroom and either built off of a past meeting's topic or prepared us for our next meeting. Planning, executing, and completing my service project was by far the best part of the program. I made flyers educating people on homelessness and posted over a hundred of them around the Boston area. Taking everything we’ve learned and putting into action to better the community was a ton of fun and why this program has been so awesome!
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Author: Shir, Spring 2021 YSEP Member (Freshman) YSEP was a very educational experience in many ways. I learned a lot about family homelessness and the importance of advocacy, but I also learned important life skills such as how to spread awareness and truly serve the community. For the final service project, my friend, Siri, and I decided to collect donations, with a goal of $200. Our idea was that for every $2 donated to our project, we would fold a paper crane and write a kind note on it. At the end of the project, we had raised $150! Along with this money, we sent the paper cranes to the families at Housing Families. While we didn’t reach our initial donation goal, we did reach a different goal of spreading awareness about homelessness. We, as students, learned more about the issue, and the people who saw our project, whether they donated or not, learned about it as well. And in my opinion, that was really the ultimate goal of YSEP. Author: Evelyn, Spring 2021 YSEP Member (7th Grader) My experience with YSEP was fantastic! I loved having representatives from Housing Families come to our meetings and teach us about advocacy and the difference between serving and helping. We also learned about the Housing Families' advocating process, and how we can assist them by writing letters or emails to our elected officials. Additionally, we had multiple planning sessions for our service projects prior to executing them (plus feedback from others). I recently finished my service project for YSEP and am extremely happy with my work! My goal was to raise between 100 and 150 dollars for HFI, by playing in a tennis tournament. I asked friends and family to donate a sum for every game I won. I ended up winning 32 games (which is four matches) and raised a total of $350! My favorite part about my service project was that I had the opportunity to do something that I love while simultaneously helping others. I also enjoyed hearing about everyone’s service projects through our final presentations. Thank you, YSEP! Author: Sophie, Spring 2021 YSEP Member (Junior) For my service project, I worked alongside another YSEP member and BB&N student to organize a book drive. Books are often overlooked, when they actually have a tremendous impact on children. Not only do books serve as entertainment and spark creative innovation, but they are a very important learning resource. Every child deserves to have access to a surplus of books when growing up, but unfortunately, this is not possible for all families. Therefore, our goal for the book drive was to collect donations from BB&N’s community and pass those books on to Housing Families, who would then distribute them to low-income/homeless families in the Greater Boston area. After operating the drive for nine days, we collected 225 books, more than four times our initial goal (50 books)! We are so happy with the result, and we hope that the books will successfully support Housing Families’ cause. Additionally, it was a really fulfilling community service experience. I already valued learning about advocacy and real-world issues through the YSEP program, so being able to take action through this service project was amazing. Author: Allison, YSEP Founder We had our final wrap-up meeting for our second session of YSEP today! Our meeting was filled with presentations for each member's service project and it was great hearing everyone successes and challenges. Students organized fundraisers, drives, and created educational materials, raising over $3,300 for Housing Families! I was beyond happy with outcome of this session and excited to have so many students passionate about learning and combatting homelessness. I hope and encourage our members to continue advocating, organizing service projects, and educating others on homelessness! Stay tuned for some blog posts from our YSEP members!
Some quotes from our Spring 2021 YSEP Members... "Yes I have a clearer understanding of the situation homeless families are in and the best ways I can help solve this problem. This program definitely makes me want to support homeless families more and I’ll even look into volunteering at HFI in the future." - Senior "I have a clearer understanding of homelessness and YSEP/HFI has definitely triggered an initiative in my mind to advocate and support more. I think the program does a great job of educating and providing useful ways to get out and help!" - Sophomore A major takeaway... "Learning of all the different ways an individual can serve a cause. Sometimes people assume that you need to have some sort of power (like politicians do) to make a change in the world, but everyone can work towards change, no matter the magnitude of the action. For example, all the service projects we did." - Junior "One major takeaway is that I never recognized homelessness as a real problem here, but this program gave me a new glance at problems that we still have in our community." - Junior "My favorite part was conducting the service project because I could apply everything I learned in the previous sessions. It was also my first service project I've done which is exciting!" - Sophomore "A major takeaway would be that everyone can help and serve someone even if they don't know the other person. With the drive, I was able to help families that I don't know, but they would still be positively impacted by my items." - Sophomore |