I had the opportunity of meeting Becca Mathews from the Gathering Place. She is organizing a 5k run and a mini mile to raise money for Hope Center Indy. She was told I volunteer at Hope Center Indy and was excited to have me work with her. I am helping promote it to students around the community and through social media. I am still volunteering weekly while I am working on this. I am not a big runner at all but maybe this will keep me motivated to run and workout. It is a fun thing for a good cause. Being able to help more with this cause and make others more aware of human trafficking and what they can do to help end it. The 5k is June 9th and is open to people of all ages. Natalie Shanahan and I have hung posters all around the school and have gotten the word out to other students.
Every Wednesday I continue to go to Hope Center Indy to help them out. I mostly clean which is fine because I do not mind cleaning. I am still happy I have the opportunity to be helping and volunteering at the Hope Center. Every time I go I just think about how big of project this must have been to take on and how great of a mission it is. In addition to going there once a week, I am going to be helping Jordan Brittsan with an awareness and fundraising project. We are going to make t-shirts and sell them. We are hoping to do something to help with the green house grand opening this spring but that is still being planned. Getting the word out and informing people about Hope Center Indy and what their mission is is really important and by making t-shirts we hope this will be an effective way of doing that. I am looking forward to this project and I think it will have a good turn out.
Natalie and I planned for this day for awhile but it turned out better than expected. We posted on social media before the day happened just to get the word out about it. We would tell our friends to tell others and so on. Thursday morning, we arrive early to school to set up our table and poster. We had people come up to us asking questions and wanting to know why we were doing this. We were able to share about human trafficking and tell people slavery still exists in this country. There were so many people who came up to us and posting on social media with the hashtag #ENDITMOVEMENT. Speaking up and raising awareness needs to be a trend and opportunities like this can happen all the time. We are so thankful we were allowed to bring awareness to our community and school. We are in it to end it.
We have continued helping at the Hope Center but we have also focused on End It day on February 22nd. We want to spread awareness of sex trafficking and we are trying to do that in our school the best way we can. Being able to volunteer our time at a place that wants the best for girls after they come out of trafficking is great. We realized there are many high schoolers that do not know this still exists even in our own city. We hope by spreading awareness on End It day will help people realize it is such a prevalent issue. Hanging up posters and sharing on social media is so small but it helps us reach a part of our world which can move to bigger things. The End It movement is something that happens worldwide and we are trying to make it happen here in New Palestine. We will have a table on that Thursday in the Lobby to draw Xs on people's hands and talk to them about this issue and what they can do to help stop it. That is why we are here, to put an end to it.
This past week, Natalie Shanahan and I have had the opportunity of meeting with the directors of Hope Center Indy, an after-care center for girls who have been in sex-trafficking. We are going to be able help and volunteer at the center with whatever we can do. This Wednesday we went and cleaned rooms that the girls will be staying in. We are so thankful we are able to help this cause. In addition to going there and helping them we want to spread awareness about sex-trafficking at our school. We are coming up with ideas and plans of how we can show how important this is and to get people involved with helping. That is what we are going to be using our class time to do. Our goal is to have a plan and go around our school on February 21, because the 22nd is END IT day and we want people to be aware of it by then. We are ready to work hard volunteering at the center and working to spread awareness.
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VolunteersLilly Schwier Archives
May 2018
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