Service Event
October 26th, 2019 in Westerville, OH
For this event that supported CRIS, a group of us went to an elementary school in Westerville to help paint murals in the building. We were helping paint two murals; one was of a nice quote and the other was a tree that had paper leaves for students to take when in need. Half of the IA students helped some of the elementary school students to paint the murals, while other students and I helped with the making of the leaves. We cut out leaves in every color, and wrote positive words and quotes on them. It was fun to get creative for a little bit; it provided a nice break in the week.
This service project was a nice example of how a community comes together to do something special that benefits everyone. While at the school, we worked with one of the art teachers, students, and parents. They all offered something important to the work we were doing, and you could tell they all really cared about it. When we were making the leaves we were encouraged to write phrases in different languages, since there is a large student population that speaks another language. The children we were working with were very excited to write in other languages, and they told us about their friends that could speak other languages. It was very exciting to see how much they wanted to include the languages of all the students. I think that this kind of excitement to welcome and be kind to people from all over the world is an important sentiment we should, as IA students, be encouraging and supporting.