Yesterday, Camille and I traveled with the Mann family to Mom's Place, a care facility for homeless mother and children in Detroit. We brought alone 60 informative books ranging from topics of marine life to insects. As my previous blog had noted, we had planned on doing two different paper crafts with them after we read them a story:
1) Making paper-weave fish
2) Making handprint butterflies.
I had no idea what to expect, as we had talked to Mrs. Mann previously. She had told us that the number of children varied widely, as much as 5 to 20 children could show up, depending on the week. We didn't even know the range of ages of children, and I hoped that the children would quietly sit there and do their crafts.
After arriving at Mom's Place, we set up our crafts while other volunteered fetched the children from the residential building nearby. Once the children were there, we gathered them into a circle and gave them a choice between a bug story and a fish story. With popular consensus, we ended up reading "Swimmy," a childrens book about a black fish, to them. We started noticing that the children were getting restless, so we had to quickly move onto crafts.
At first, the crafts went great. The children were enthralled with the colored paper and our example projects that we showed them. We split them up into two tables, one table taking the fish project (with Camille), another taking the butterfly project (with me).
As time wore on, however, the children gradually began to lose interest, and squirmed in their seats; they needed to run around and wanted to play dress-up instead. We realized that our fish paper weaving project was too difficult for the age group and that we needed something more simple, rather than the complex directions that had children scratching their heads. The butterfly project, on the other hand, was perfect, with just enough fun and skill mixed together to captivate the children. Ultimately, we managed to help the restless children finish their projects and then let them play.
After their project and play time, the children were allowed to play outside. The older volunteers acted both as playmates and referees, drawing the line between play and bullying. Camille and I soon found ourselves pushing squealing children down the slide and twirling children around. We helped children fill up buckets of rocks to make "sand-castles" and reprimanding children for stealing other child's action figures. Inside, we played pretend with them, pretending to buy pizza and $60 bananas.When we left at 12:30, we were tuckered out. Yet, as we walked the children back to the residential building, the true impact of our actions became clear. As we entered the building, I noticed the living conditions of each child: in a room roughly the size of our high school gym, there were beds littered here and there, each bed occupied with a mother and child. The children eagerly showed their mother what they made, true happiness showing in their faces, proud of their own work.
Just as I had mentioned with my actions at Logan Elementary, my small actions of donating some small crafts and a few hours of my time on a Saturday led to the betterment (in a small way) of a child's life, a few hours away from the poverty that was so evident in the residential building. Not only as I able to engage in the global issue of poverty in a local manner through helping local children in Detroit, but I had fun doing so. I laughed at some of the silly antics of the children, as they played pretend and dressed in princess dresses. Ethically, I was able to impart some good through my actions, increasing the happiness of the children in those few meager hours.
Overall, it was a fulfilling experience. I humbled by the poverty that the children lived in, and my humility will only drive me to continue on with my project, to do similar things in other areas, or perhaps, to visit Mom's Place again.
