Team Reflections
Model the Way
Challenge the Process
Inspire a Shared Vision
Enable Others to Act
In our project, Heal the HeART, we faced a number of challenges that made us reimagine how we were going to execute our service project. Right from the beginning of our project we had to come up with a way to get into Texas Children’s because we were told that it was hard to get groups in. From that point on we have had to look at our problems in a different way, not as a difficulty but as an opportunity to change our project for the better.
Heal the HeART was constantly changing our plan for our project, because of new information we would learn each week. We went for making bracelets and movie matrons to a Christmas crafts. This caused us o constantly be looking out for new crafts ideas, we would especially look at Pinterest for ideas. AN example of Challenge the process was that Rachel had done a craft in. the past that was decorating ornaments and our original plan for our decorating ornament craft was to have the kids decorate the outside of the ornament but Rachel showed us that we could put glue and glitter in the inside of the ornament and we ended up using her idea. Another example was that I was telling my mother about our gingerbread house craft and e were original young to build a house out of cardboard bu we use milk cartons, I thought this was a brilliant idea and brought this to the group we ended up using the milk cartons.
Challenge the process was a important part of our service project. We would have to adjust our ideas to Periwinkle's plan and limitations. We would were able to take new information in stride and completely change our plans to fit this new information. No matter how repetitive the process seemed we kept n going and eventually our determination payed off and we were able to finalize everything with Periwinkle and start our service project.
~ Caroline Moody
At the very beginning of our project we made an effort to sit down and brainstorm what we wanted our group values to be. We thought about what values we wanted to embody the most and carry out through the project, thinking of the types of things that make groups work, and what type of things we thought each person should exemplify to make sure our team would work smoothly. After that we took the ones we found most important and wrote them out so we would be able to look at them whenever we needed a reminder of what we wanted to stand for as a group.
We came up with seven core values that we kept alive throughout the project. One of the values we had was to have constant positivity. We wanted to keep things upbeat and positive because thinking positively allows for a better working environment. There was a point in our project when it got really tough to stay positive and persevere and it was taking a toll on each person, but there would be one action, word, or sign that helped people smile again and stay positive that our idea would become a reality. Another thing we did to align our actions with our shared valued was we would hold hands at the beginning of our work days and just squeeze each other’s hands to “pass around energy”. Even though it probably looked funny to other people, we used it as a way to remind ourselves that we are all there for each other, this aligned with friendship and kindness. We made sure that throughout the project each person had a set responsibility and they would be able to complete it themselves which we had as one of our values. We encouraged the heart by constantly giving words of affirmation to those who did a great job and to the whole team when we got something accomplished. Through planning all of our crafts and thinking about what to do with the kids, we kept the mindset of the kids first. Everything we were doing was so that they could have a fun hour or two of arts and crafts and be able to have control in a time where they don't have much.
Through our planning and executing of our project we tried our best to keep these values alive as much as possible. With positive words and actions, being responsible for tasks given to us, and in many other ways, we exemplified our values throughout the course of our project.
If we hadn’t gone through this step of Model the Way our project probably wouldn't have turned out as good as it did. There would most likely have been confusion and our group dynamic would have been drastically different. We all grew so close through the course of these months and these values played a big role in our team, within our personal relationships and the relationship we had towards the project. These values gave us a foundation for what we wanted to accomplish and how we wanted to accomplish it. This step was imperative to the journey to our completion and success of our project.
~ Grace Fisher
We recognized contributions on our project team by celebrating our wins together. During our project we had a lot of ups and downs because we did not have good communication with our non-profit, so when we were blessed with the opportunity to get news from Periwinkle, we celebrated appropriately.
In the beginning when we would celebrate our wins, we would give each other hugs, high fives, and then talk about how great it was to have this win in our team. As our group grew as a family more and more every day, week, and month, our celebrations got more intimate. Later on when we experienced a fantastic win for our team, we had finally gotten to meet with our non-profit after 3 months of visioning and planning our project. With this enormous win in our team, Bousi and Maddie treated the half of the team that was able to go to the meeting, to Whataburger for dinner. We had so much to be thankful for because of the great achieve of meeting with Periwinkle and when we got back to class the day after our meeting we made sure that everyone who was not able to go to the meeting was encouraged by how much their hard work had been appreciated by Erin and Meredith. Throughout our entire project we would always encourage our team and now family to do their best every day and we made sure that we could pass our good vibes by having a energy circle to pass the energy from one person to the next, as long as we could remember to do it every day. During class, we may have seemed a little distracted but in reality, we were being productive young adults helping to encourage others in their everyday tasks for our project.
~ Maddie Novak
Annotated Bibliography
Rock the Treatment: An Annotated Bibliography
“Chemotherapy Gift Baskets Help Patients Cope.” Rock the Treatment, www.rockthetreatment.com/chemo-gift-baskets/.
Summary:
The mission of the organization Rock the Treatment is to offer thoughtful gifts for cancer patients, specifically those who are going through chemotherapy and radiation. The needs of cancer patients are defiantly considered when making the baskets because Rock the Treatment gets input from cancer survivors and caregivers. Baskets can contain items specifically designed to entertain certain cancer patients during their times of treatment. Age and other factors are taken into consideration for what to put into these baskets. These colorful fun baskets contain items that do not only provide comfort, but also that are useful during the chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
Assessment: This article excitedly states the mission of the organization Rock the Treatment, which is to offer thoughtful gifts for cancer patients, specifically those who are going through chemotherapy and radiation. The organization seems to put an emphasis on, one, catering their baskets to specifically cancer patients, and, two, personalizing baskets to meet each individual patient’s interest. This seems to create a special effect for the patients receiving the baskets because they are personal and meaningful to the individual.
Reflection: This article provides a look into what kind of thought and mindset goes into making a meaningful gift basket from cancer patients. When creating something to give to a cancer patient, important things such as the age and interests of the patient should be kept in mind to ensure that the basket is truly entertaining and stimulating for the patient. A gift basket should be personalized and truly capture the interests of the patient to comfort and empower them as they go through the journey of their treatment.
~ Rachel Zakarevicz
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Annotated Bibliography: Gold Crafts
Grono, Kate. “12 Gold crafts and activities for childhood cancer awareness month.” The Craft Train. Pretty Creative Theme, Genesis Framework, 18 Sept. 2015. https://www.thecrafttrain.com/12-gold-kids-crafts-and-activities-for-kids-cancer-awareness-month/. Accessed 11 Dec. 2017.
Summary: The Craft Train is a blog designed and run by Kate Grono, a mother of two kids, who loves to craft. She shares DIY crafts for young children on her blog for many different purposes; Christmas, Cancer, animals, dolls, dinosaurs. On one page, “12 Gold crafts and activities for childhood cancer awareness month,” Grono shares twelve different crafts, relating with the color gold, with her audience to support, and spread participation for the month of Childhood cancer awareness month. The crafts linked are easy and fun for children and parents to work on together and to bond over. Kate also mentions that the crafts can serve for three reasons: connect with kids, create something meaningful, and remember the importance of childhood cancer awareness.
Assessment: On the About us page, Kate has a personal message about her background and the purpose of her sharing of the fun, colorful crafts. Kate has always been a creative person and eventually wanted to share her ideas with anyone she could. Throughout her journey from childhood to adulthood, she came to the realization that what other people think about adults doing crafts does not matter. Kate continues to use her inspiration, creativity, and joyful spirit to spread the happiness that arts and crafts brings to her.
Reflection: Heal The Heart uses this website for inspiration for arts and crafts to make with young children at Texas Children’s Hospital. The team did not take ideas directly from the site or use the crafts presented, but they used the theme of children cancer awareness crafts to brainstorm other ideas for their projects with the children. The inspiration that Kate presented on the “12 Gold crafts and activities for childhood cancer awareness month” page contributed to the project; ideas, inspiration, and theme. This website was important to Heal the Heart from the contribution of inspiration and ideas.
~ Bousi Valentin
Annotated Bibliography: Little Miss Craft
“Crafts - Cancer Patient Crafts.” LittleMissCraft. Accessed 12 Dec. 2017.
littlemisscraft.com/crafts/Cancer_Patient_Crafts-49.
Summary: Little miss craft was created because it's founder had been diagnosed with cancer. The founders name is unknown and goes by the alias of little miss craft. She found that after being diagnosed, the treatments left her unable to do many things she used to enjoy doing. Crafting became her safe haven and she wanted to share the crafts that got her through a difficult time with others. Little Miss Craft was created for all children, predominantly those affected by cancer to be able to do something that makes them feel creative. The program and website offers a multitude of crafts and instructions. These crafts are fun and simple to do, easy to access, and offers a variety of options. Little miss craft offers alternative activities for children who need a little creativity in their lives.
Assessment: On the website’s about us page, the founder has provided a glimpse of the program’s origins. She uses her own life experience and applies it to why she decided to start this website. Because she experienced the unfortunate effects of cancer firsthand, she is able to create something that can directly benefit others like her. She found a cause that both applied to her and spoke to her and created something out of it. She decided to share her own remedy with others who may be going through a similar situation.
Reflection: Our social change project Heal the Heart often uses this site to inspire us. We figure that since they make crafts often directed toward cancer patients, it would cater to us perfectly. This site allows us a variety of crafts that use accessible supplies and are simple make for the children. Crafts are usually tedious or demanding, but this website offers both intricate and simpler crafts. This ensures that the children will not only enjoy making the crafts, but are proud of what they create.
~ Mindy Nguyen
In the beginning of our project, there we moments where nobody really knew what to do. We started off looking at the project as this big thing needed to be done, rather than small tasks that needed to be done one step at a time. As project manager, I really tried to step up and help guide them to a task that needed to get done, and helped them see the project in small steps. To help us out in this part of our project my team and I really used our Project Task Plan to help us feel accomplished, and to see it step by step. Over time, my team started seeing what needed to be done without me telling them. They felt empowered to because they were able to see the project in small pieces and felt comfortable to take the initiative. Each person had a role to the team that was needed in order for our group to succeed. I could see that each member really felt like they contributed to the project’s success. For example, Caroline and Mindy were creative, so they both stepped up to help organize the crafts for kids to do. I believe they felt confident to do so because as a team we were finally confident on what our vision was for the project, and because of how they were now able to tackle small day to day task. I tried to encourage each individual by trying to get to know them and connect with them beyond the project. It helps create a fun and friendly environment people are comfortable to work in and it makes bad days not seem so bad. I wanted the group to be like a family, and now that the project is coming to an end I can now say that we have. My team and I have really become such better leaders and better friends.
~ Miranda Wilkes
Our group’s vision statement is “Heal the Heart”. We imagined the “heal” to mean in this context the reducing of pain internally. The second part of our vision “the heart” is to be clarified as the emotional state of a person. We casted this vision through constant communication of our common aspirations. We had designated time to where we were able to discover our mutually shared passions for something that broke our heart. With each conversation we developed an ideal image of what mattered for our project to achieve its ends. Sharing our vision allowed the foundation for motivation to withstand the upcoming challenges that we could face together. We continued motivating each other to work towards the result that we externally and internally wanted. Considering the potential possibilities that halted the processes, it was important that we realized we each had shared aspirations to overcome them. We illustrated our vision and the destination of our vision to clarify that we were on the right track most days. We infused our vision with activities, pictures, and our own inspirations. Anticipating setbacks allowed us to daringly glance at other destinations, while maneuvering our way with hopes to finish our journey. We casted this exciting and engaging destination by immersing ourselves in it, articulating our concerns, passions and goals for the project.
We enlisted others by simply showing our meaningful vision that we all shared. The feeling of belonging to a common purpose helped us commit to a common purpose to connect meaningfully with others. Beyond our group we had our parents, fellow students and our main motivator Miss Galassi. For our fundraising we had to colorbated with our parents and to do this we needed to expand our vision. The uniqueness we produced with our vision helped the people we shared it with memorize what our hope was for this project. Understanding how we had to make our group’s vision extraordinarily allowed us to differentiate our style and peak the interest of the organization we were working with. When we bumped into moments of confusion we seemed more compelling illustrations that would likely empower our work for future finalization in the project. We essentially just communicated our shared vision through positivity to demonstrate our genuine insights that we wanted to achieve to extend the memorability of it all. We connected with others by animating our vision with conviction that we genuinely believed it could be done.
~Shea Reid