Our volunteers at Roseland have been amazing: consistent, responsible, passionate about helping our kids, positive, and ready to learn. In addition to the fantastic individuals who come each week to support classrooms, help with homework, and lead activities, we have a few special groups that are completing senior service learning projects with CalSERVES at Roseland.
First, our returning volunteer Nallely Ramirez, and her classmate Veronica Corona, from Windsor High School, are planning a fantastic event for February. We will be helping them to host a Multicultural Fair, where students will spend the after noon traveling “around the world” from booth to booth. At each station, they will learn customs of different nations around the globe, taste-testing recipe binder examples of foreign cuisine, completing crafts that symbolize a cultural practice, and hearing stories of different ways of life. These activities will support their exposure to new ideas and promote tolerance of various groups of people. A few of the nations students will explore will be China, Greece, Mexico, and Italy, though there will be eight country booths in total. Our students will be taking passports around to each station to earn a stamp, as one of many tokens by which they can remember this remarkable experience. We are thrilled to help support this event, and are proud of these volunteers who are working so hard to plan and fundraise to make it possible.
We are also in the midst of supporting another service-learning project, by two seniors from Ursuline, Amanda Osequera and Jennifer Bipes. As the girls' academic focus is supported by an art-core, they hoped to build their project around the artistic expression of younger students. In past years at Roseland, we were blessed with the wonderful Imagination Bus Project, where visiting not-for-profit volunteers would bring our kids on-board a renovated bus to complete art projects ten at a time. Since we’re well acquainted with this system for pulling kids out and encouraging their artistic expression, it was a smooth transition to support their project in this same format. The girls were pleased with the idea, and after some activity planning and support from Ursuline for art materials, the project started. We have had such a successful experience so far and the students really appreciate the existence of art in their school. We are so thankful to be able to help facilitate such a fantastic project idea to allow our kids the freedom of expression and support their artistic abilities.
We have fantastic volunteers at Roseland, and we hope to acquire more who will support CalSERVES and make our program more successful.
