Amazing artwork, theatre, and dance performances by local talent combined with supporting human rights advocacy, and those who have sacrificed their lives for the betterment of humanity. 💖🙆🏽♀️🙏 Take time always to give back to the community and to show some gratitude to those who have the courage to make an impact on the world through the arts!!
Hooping for the Mothers and Children at St. Annes
Every now and again I have the honor of hooping at St. Anne's home for mothers and children. The facility provides single mothers with housing, stability, and with the support that they need for their children.
Hunger and Food Insecurity
This is a photo taken from my 2 years at The People's Potato-- an all vegan Non-Profit soup kitchen in Montreal that serves hundreds of free meals a day to fight poverty in Quebec and also hosts bi-weekly food banks. I spent a lot of my university days here.
Food banks have been an important aspect of my life. At the age of 18, my parents encouraged me to start volunteering at an all vegan non-profit soup kitchen and food bank in Montreal as a means of combating poverty in Quebec and making friends. I not only helped cook and serve food to over 300 a day, but I also benefited from the partnership that the People's Potato had with local grocers.
Prior to volunteering there, I struggled with eating disorders. Seeing how other people struggled and witnessing the hundreds of people that showed up for food bundles and soup, delivered me from my own eating dysmorphia. To an extent-- the habits that were deeply entrenched had somehow gradually been dispelled and lost through our mission to do something meaningful for the community. It not only released me from my own self torment, but it gave me a whole new perspective on food, helped me build relationships with good people, and overall lose sight of myself in our quest to serve others. Through my wok with the People's Potato which served healthy vegan foods and provided food bundles, and my work with the Cinema Politica Network, I found that uplifting communities is not just about food access but also access to the right kinds of food.
It’s easy to get nit picky at a restaurant when you don’t remember the man outside on the side walk who would be happy with the food on our table, or to not feel like finishing your food over a good conversation. Often people love to bring up starving kids in other countries. Those people forget that their are starving families in our own back yards. As a waitress, I saw first hand how much food is discarded by customers and by restaurant facilities.
Through those I served, I was quickly able to see the poverty that exists all around us in every metropolitan city. Even growing up in DC, programs like WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) that provided families with food were integral to family members and friends. Witnessing how many goods go to waste through my work in the restaurant industry, it is clear that more can be done. Knowing the amount of food that grocers and restaurants waste daily, everyone can have a seat at the table. According to the Capitol Area Food Bank, 641,000 struggle with food insecurity. 41 million people, 13 million children, and 5.4 million elderly citizens in the US were also at risk of food insecurity as published by Feeding America. As referenced by Bread.org, close to 800 million people worldwide are victims of poverty and thus, hunger.
Food For All DC works to address the problem locally through partnering with the Capitol Area Food Bank and providing local residents in poverty with basic food staples. Their parent organization, Amurt (Amanda Murga Universal Relief Team) works internationally providing citizens globally with hunger relief and security. Through my work for these organizations, I not only assist in putting together food bundles but I deliver them to families, elderly citizens, and handicapped residents throughout the city. Subsequent to my continued work with organizations like these, I hope to one day found my own food, clothing and beauty/wellness banks that help the poor gain food security and reclaim their sense of esteem and well-being.
Cirular Wellness: Girl's Empowerment and Hoop-Dance
It's important to have a mission in the world! I taught a girls empowerment group with my mom and nana, 3 generations working to instill a drive to succeed. I want girls in my community to be able to understand the fundamental building blocks of success: self actualization, sister-love, physical fitness, emotional wellness, and spiritual wellness. I was inspired by my hoop: using my passion for hoop-dancing as a means of engaging the girls in physical fitness. We also do intro to vinyasa style yoga, and begin each class with a word of the day and concept of the day building on themes such as resilience, self-advocacy, resourcefulness, and ambition. While this program started out with a hoop-dance and fitness as the focal point, it now focuses primarily on art. I would like to partner with more than one organization for this goal. If you are interested in uplifting the youth and helping to inspire a generation of girls ready to do the impossible, feel free to contact me.
This is my favorite photograph of a class centered on "Mission Jars". It is important to track your progress when you set out to achieve. Mission jars are a great way to keep track and remind you of your goals.
I wrote this as a memorandum as how I believe this program could be implemented:
According to Do Something.org, 75% of adolescent girls become involved with negative activities, such as self –harming due to low self esteem and 70% of girls between ages 15 to 17 may sometimes avoid going out due to body insecurities. According to Gabriela Baeza, author of Girls: Risk Factors, “The average North American girl will watch 5, 000 hours of television, including 80,000 ads, before she starts kindergarten.”
Issues of domestic violence, human trafficking, sexual assault, and misogyny are directly linked to self-harming, lack of self-esteem, depression, thoughts of inadequacy during a girl’s early development. All areas of school and education need to institute programs that directly take preventive measures against theses issues by putting girl’s health at the forefront of public education.
Schools must institute programs specifically to address unrealistic media images, eating disorders, self-harming, assessing social pressures. By hosting regular career workshops targeted toward girls that stress themes like intelligence, self-actualization, self-advocacy, we combat media emphasis on physical features.
If schools everywhere make mandatory a spectrum of physical education programs yearly, this will result in enthusiasm toward exercise and encourage the habit of regular physical activity at young ages. Exercise, as a daily ritual (and not secondary) results in the release of endorphins, which improve overall mood, sleep, and mental clarity. The role that exorcise plays in a child’s life can emotionally stabilize difficulties during childhood development. Thus, school programs must promote fitness, healthy eating, sleep, and journaling to monitor emotional health.
At every school, it is vital that girls articulate their experiences during physical/emotional development. By creating a mandatory safety network where girls can express areas that they need the most support and relate to peers, we maintain ongoing dialogues that address and assess emotional health.
During a girl’s early development, it is paramount that she have a network of people who provide guidance and shared experiences. This is a catalyst for girls to develop friendships with peers, as opposed to competing or conforming to social pressures. This also allows the community to detect signs of sexual abuse, self-harming, eating disorders, depression, and human trafficking.
School sports teams, brief talks about sex education, and biology classes are not enough. Girls need a curriculum that specifically addresses physical and emotional developmental needs, teaches stress management/ mindfulness, implements a spectrum of mandatory P.E curricula (Ex: dance; yoga; to cross country) every year from primary school to high school, and peer groups that mediate difficult times during early development. It is imperative that girls not remain in the dark about health or feel hesitant to speak up when in physical/emotional distress.
It is even more crucial that this dialogue of women’s health be opened up to men and that they too are meeting with peer groups regularly which will prevent habits of aggression and additional pressures that boys are subjected to by the media, and combat issues such as harassment, violence, aggression, depression, misogyny and homophobia, thus improving relations between boys and girls and creating understanding.
Sister-Cities International Sustainability Summit in Beijing
My 2014 Beijing Rendez-vous with Sister Cities International! I was one of 8 delegates in the District of Columbia to be selected by the Department of State to attend this International Conference and Deliver a presentation about Sustainability. See photos below from the trip.
SERVING AND SERVING
I was having a talk with my roommate the other night about the kind of humanitarian work she does. Sometimes I feel like the work that matters the most you do for free, or for a stipend, or for not very much. It's one of those backwards things about life I think. When people in casual conversation ask you how much you get paid and you can't give them an answer. The hardest and most humbling work is the kind that throws you a bone. I never fancied sitting at a desk, my butt starts to get achy. Love to wear turtle necks, blazers and trousers often but not every day. I like my work to serve people, but not through a computer or over the phone. There is nothing wrong with liking that kind of thing, I have friends who love office life.
For me, I always liked to be moving. I loved volunteering in college and even before college. You lose yourself in the greater picture of what you're doing.
There was one service job that did pay. I wasn't planting trees, raising money, or awareness. I was serving food and coffee. And I always went overtime, making fruit skewers, and writing Chinese characters in my lattes. Most people I've worked with hate serving, but I loved it right down to my very last day where unfortunately, I never said goodbye. I didn't know how to.
I loved to sit and listen to how people's day went. I mean, I had no choice. But apart from my job description, I quite enjoyed learning about other people outside of myself. I loved to learn how to say "Thank You" in another language. I infuse the game of order-taking with really cheesy jokes and quirky innuendos. As cheerfully cynical as I am, those mornings, and nights were the most magical. The pay was alright, but a part of me didn't want to leave. I loved the dim lights and annoying music playlists, the restless chatter that grew miraculously from the silence of 6am, roaring at 12 o clock noon, and simmering towards evening shift. I loved writing messages on receipts for people or reading the ones people left behind. After making a new friend through serving, I'd walk away after an elaborate goodbye and play the guessing game with myself on how they'd choose to follow-up. Will they leave a note? Will they leave a number? Will they follow me to the POS? Will they come back and sit in my section? Will they invite me to sit with them?
I felt like I had a window into people, and like I was in the midst of a grand epicenter of interwoven cultures, paradigms, ideas, and experiences.
It was always guessing. I think my favorite thing about serving people, while it was not the type of service I was used to, I still felt very close to the community and I still like to believe that whatever work I did made a difference to somebody. However small it might have been. It was the only job I held where I never knew what to expect. I was like a surfer, learning to adjust to whatever tide came my way. Even when business was so fast, and I thought I'd internally combust, I never lost sight of how a smile and simple physical or eye contact could impact somebody's day. It's the very little things. Really.
Those days were full of wonder but everything for it's time I guess. I don't know how much my spirit is worth. My work has graduated to a multitude of different projects. At one point, both community and corporate. All in all I just like doing. Whatever I do, whether or not I get paid. I wish that was how the world could be. Every so often, I have the luxury of meeting someone else who likes to just do. I'm glad that I left my job as a server. Serving in a global or political capacity is very different. It is about information, awareness, and having a platform. Yet still, when I align my experiences with volunteerism, with my mentality as a waitress, I find a profound connection with the way I've approached both. As if they were one and the same.
I am unsure whether that's a reflection of something in my nature or a commentary on the stalemate of working class America. I believe many of us ideally wish for meaning in our job description, but when work is just "work" that thing that you dread waking up for, it's common to separate work from the altruistic, meaning. Many people have mouths to feed and are struggling just to break even, Many people are trying to restructure their lives in whatever way.
Is it possible though, that all positions no matter the pay grade (or whether or not they pay) have an essence of that fulfilling meaning? What would serving have been like had I not viewed my customers as people, and instead looked at them as dollar bills?
And I used to tell myself that until I could make enough money to live out my dream of going somewhere, Thank you, would be the next best thing to living that dream of traveling.
Hence, here are some ways to say thank you that I picked up from waiting tables:
Kitos (Finnish)
Ich Danke Ihnen(German)
Danke(German)
Dankjewel(Dutch)
Obrigada(Portuguese)
Salve( "Cheers" Portuguese)
Sante ("Cheers" French)
Grazie (Italian/Maltese)
Grazie mille (Thanks a million)
Yegeneyeley (Eritrean)
Arigato Gozaimasu(Japanese)
Domo Arigato(Japanese)
Salamat(Tagalo)
Terimah Kasih(Indonesian)
Xie Xie (Mandarin)
A Wanu Kaka (Fon)
Merci Beaucoup (French)
Tousand Tag ("A thousand Thanks" In Norwegian)
Takk(Norwegian)
Sukria (Hindi)
Chokran (Arabic/Also said in Sudan)
This (as "Thank You" and You're welcome in Sign Language)
Efharisto (Greek)
Hvala ti (Croation)
Dios bo'otik (Yucatec/Mayan)
Gamawo (Korean)
Qathlo (Klingon