Today we heard the results from the Hope for Honduran Children committee regarding the alumni giving commitment which would essentially commit us, as Pericleans, to donating $100 each per year after graduation. This money would go to helping support H4HC and would be tracked by Morgan Abate as the Periclean of the Year. We surveyed the class so that each person could anonymously express their approval of this plan. 19 class members said yes to giving for 3 years, 17 said yes to giving for 5 years, and half said yes to giving for 10 years. The committee will decide where we should go from here.
Morgan Abate also gave a presentation today on her experience in Ecuador last semester with an organization called La Fundacion El Arenal. It is run by indigenous women from outside of the city and it hosts impoverished children from ages 5-15. The goals of the organization are to help the children with their homework while also creating a daily routine for the children which includes time for homework, recreation, snack and cleaning responsibilities. Many of these children come from a poor family life including physical, verbal and sexual abuse. Morgan also discussed some problems associated with short and long term volunteers that came to the foundation. Specifically, she talked about complications with volunteers from UNC Charlotte who were non-Spanish speakers, first year students, and only there for three days. She felt that their involvement may have been more destructive for the students than constructive. The foundation also required mandatory health and nutrition based workshops for the parents of these students.
We had many announcements today including an update on the Elevator speech, which Arianna and Caroline are working on. We were reminded to attend Celebrating Periclean, and the LUPE committee conveyed that they will be inviting those women to attend. We decided that next week’s class will be at Peacehaven, a farm that Christian is involved with. We also decided that, rather than having class on 10/20, all will be required to attend the deliberative discussion on immigration in McKinnon. April has RSVP’d to this event on behalf of our class. We also talked about the Faith ID program bill which, Morgan and Anna relayed, is likely to pass through Congress. This bill will block these ID’s from being valid. LUPE is having a rally to protest this bill and it would be nice to have our class attend to show our support and also to have some non-hispanic faces. Finally, those who are interested in going on the Honduras trip in January need to update April on their status in this decision process.
We ended with committee updates. The P3 committee is still working on getting speakers and are in contact with a number of businesses. Anna and Caroline found a keynote speaker who they think would be perfect, Sean Humphrey, so they want the classes approval to continue communication with him. We would likely also offer him some money to come and speak. Other things for the P3 committee to be working on include: solidifying the lunch options at the summit, deciding if vendors will be able to sell goods at the summit, establishing when people will be able to begin registering for the summit. It seems that the main challenge they face right now is getting businesses to come and speak.
The fundraising committee made $535 last week in Cookies-to-Go-Go. They sold 700 cookies to 140 people, which is more than double what they did last year. In their committee meeting, they talked about setting the date for the next Cookies-to-Go-Go which will likely be November 11th. They also talked about ways to improve and make this better.
The LUPE committee was very busy this week. They met with Blanca Sunday night to talk about a grant, they also did tutoring this past week and went to two LUPE board members houses. Anna and Abby are meeting with Suyapa and Miriam to discuss another tutoring program; however, Anna and Abby will have to relay that we currently do not have the capacity to support another program. They are going to suggest some other organizations that may be able to help them such as EV.
H4HC will ahve the conversation this week about the proposal for the post-graduation funding initiative and come back to the class with what they have decided.
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