AfterWords

A couple weeks ago Center for Service-Learning celebrated their accomplishments and highlighted service-learning projects for the past school year. It was a night filled with great music by Arlie Neskahi & Eagle’s Jump and organic snacks prepared by the campus’s catering department.

The event started early at 5:30pm with students setting up presentation and posters from Sarah Zale’s English 205 class: War as Myth, Identity, and Wound. The room quickly filled with chatter and laughter as people tapped their toes to the beat of the music and giggled at pictures on the slides. Thomas Murphy, the Master of Ceremonies, greeted guest and expressed his excitement of the tremendous growth for the Center. President Jack Oharah also welcome the guest and went over some of the accomplishments for the year. The program highlights of the year was Profiles in the Art of Living and Voices in Wartime. Both Jennifer Inslee and Michael Wewer’s students reflected on the Profiles in the Art of Living and shared stories on how this service-learning project had changed them. Jennifer Inslee also announced her excitement for the phase two of this project coming in the academic year. The next program highlight was Voices in Wartime presented and reflected by Sarah Zale and Melissa Storm. In between these program highlights were announcements by Hayden Nichols of a new service-learning project in East Africa and by Kerrie Murphy of the chosen web design for EdCC’s Pow Wow website is Ling Chun’s design from Steve Sosa’s VISC120 class.

Listed below are the individuals and groups that received awards and/or recognition:

Service-Learning Student of the Year: Penny Green

Volunteer of the Year: Cari Pendergrass

Students in Service Member of the Year: Sandra Kilian

Service-Learning Faculty of the Year: Marie Johnson

Volunteer Group of the Year: S.A.V.E. the Earth Club

Community Partner of the Year: WSU Extension

Campus Service-Learning Partner of the Year: College Relations

AmeriCorps Retention Project: Jacklin Edwards, Jesus Silva, Penny Green

Students in Service graduates: Corbin Powell, Gerard Ah-Fook, Kristi Gutierrez, John Wennberg, Joseph Contreras, Lisa Quirk, Luke Pirie, Margarita Naumchik, Mary Andrews, Megan Lockhart, Mindi Hart, Nataliya Naumchik, Penny Green, Ryan Gilmore, Sabrina Berthold, Sandra Kilian, Yin Yu

Web links:
Arlie Neskahi & Eagle’s Jump
Campus Catering
Celebration Program

Community Spaghetti Feed and Auction at Trinity Lutheran Church
Fundraiser for Edmonds Community College Student Association Project Home

May 30th, 2009 (Saturday) from 12:00-2:00 with a live Auction and ‘rummage sale items’

Trinity Lutheran Church
6215-196th St. SW
Lynnwood WA 98036

All proceeds benefit the Project Home Association of Edmonds Community College. The goal is to build funds in order to support our homeless students in the areas of transition housing, emergency funds, skill building education around life advancement activities, and food. Tickets are available the day of at the door.

Nicole A Allen
Executive Officer for Diversity
ASEdCC_Diversity@edcc.edu

Volunteers are encourge to post their reflection here.

The ODET (Organizational Development and Employee Training) department on campus had their annual Building Community Day on the non-instructional day on Friday (5/8). This year the ODET department also partnered with Sustainability Counsel to bring Awakening the Dreamer Symposium to campus. As explained on their website, the symposium “through dynamic group interactions, leading edge information, and inspiring multimedia, participants of this half-day event are inspired to reconnect with their deep concern for our world, and are empowered to make a difference”.

During the symposium, there was a non-verbal physical interaction. One of the partners I end up with during the second exercise became teary eyes as she stood there in silence staring back at me as the host spoke. Although the exercise did not have the same affect on me, I felted humbled by her tears and felt bad that I was not experiencing this in the same level as she was. In that moment, she felt safe to expose her vulnerability and to share it with me.

Towards the end of the symposium, one of the video showed a portion of a list of not-for-profit organizations in the world also trying to save the world. The list is apparently in counts of billions. Although I can list a few local community partners we work with on campus, I was reassured that we are not the only ones working towards change and that this is a common global goal.

Web links:
ODET Department
Sustainability Counsel
Awakening the Dreamer

Students, staff and community came together this weekend for this annual event planned by the First Nation Club. Many thanks to volunteers for dedicating their time to make this event successful. We welcome any feedback, reflection of your experience and any comments. Pictures of the event and my personal volunteer coordinator reflection will be posted shortly.

Updated on May 10th, 2009:
Similar to most of the volunteers, this was my first year attending EdCC Pow Wow and also my first time coordinating volunteers for an event. Since I have not participated in other pow wows, I am not sure how this event compares to the past years. In my perspective, the event went smoothly as the volunteers were wonderful in being adaptive with tasks I gave them. On Sunday tear down, with assistance from the lovely volunteers, we finished an hour earlier then predicted. With 12-hour long days, I realize that I fuel on others’ experiences and their excitement is what I strive towards. In the end, I was tired of fried bread and pop corn; however, I’ve gain a new understanding of interpersonal connection and I feel very honor to have helped with this year’s powwow.