Outreach with the International Team

This past Saturday we had our first volunteer event at the Community Food and Outreach Center in downtown Orlando. Their mission is to help those in need by providing food, crisis care, opportunities for education and employment, and many other services. We volunteered along other UCF students and worked with restocking all of shelves as well as general cleaning and upkeep. 

With only 12 people on staff, the center relies greatly on the work of volunteers. We were able to help a lot of families and meet a lot of great people and also work alongside each other! You can read more about the Community Food and Outreach Center here

Fundraising or FUNdraising?!

It's been really great getting to know my team over the past month with a social, two fundraisers and a volunteer event. In planning our first fundraiser, I was concerned with picking a date, securing in-kind donations and setting up the Go Fund Me account. Bogged down with all of the details in the beginning, I forgot how much fun spending time with my team and working towards a common goal would be!

Dunkin' Donuts donated four boxes of munchkins for the event, and we accepted donations for the donuts at the Free Speech Lawn. We had great participation in the event. Eight of us were there, and our faculty advisor stopped by to say hello. We all stepped out of our comfort zones in an effort to make a little extra cash for our team. The group came up with some pretty catchy slogans to encourage people to donate. Two of our favorites included "Help a munchkin, get a munchkin!"and "Donations are gluten free!"

The generosity of our patrons was very inspiring. A lot of students and faculty were really interested in the work we would be doing in Charleston this spring. Many of them had not yet heard of ABP or Volunteer UCF and expressed interest in getting involved in the future. Some of our friends and fellow ABP board members stopped by to donate and say hello. It's always great to see friendly faces when fundraising!

The event was successful as we raised $94 and made some memories along the way!
Learn more about the Knights for Kids trip by clicking here.

READ ALL ABOUT IT!

Last week my team had their first fundraiser for the International Trip. We had books donated from the library and reserved a spot out on the student union patio during the busiest day of the week: Market Day. All of the books were organized by fiction, non-fiction etc as soon as the student heard us shouting "All Books are ONE DOLLAR", they flocked to the table. There was a steady stream of students throughout our four hours and we raised a good amount of money!

I found it fun to do a fundraising event that aligned with the same social issue of our trip: Education and Literacy. Also, a book sale is rare on Market Day so we had a lot of people coming by just asking what we were all about, which gave us a great way to market Alternative Break Program and all that we have to offer.

My team is off to a great start and hopefully we will have many more successful events ahead of us!

It's slowly coming together...

It has been a rough start so far, but I have hope! I had to cancel my first fundraising event because no one ended up showing up. My second fundraising event was a bit more successful... kind of. Two people showed up (hooray!), but as I was biking to Tijuana Flats, I dropped my keys somewhere. I spent about an hour and half walking up and down University Boulevard looking for them. Along the way I ran into a couple friends that helped me look for my keys and contributed to the partial proceeds at Tijuana Flats. In the end, I found my keys and two of my participants got money towards their trip. 

Two alternates decided to decline offers for the trip. I found one alternate. He is super stoked about our upcoming events! I am still currently looking for someone to fill the last spot. 

Our next event is on Sunday. We will be on the Low Elements out at the Challenge Course. Only one participant is unable to attend. This is will the first event where a majority of the group will be in attendance. I am looking forward to everyone meeting each other, and for Andrea to meet them as well! :)

oh and, Happy Halloween! ^_^! 

Under the overpass and over the mosquitos.

Our first volunteer event was a great success! Although only two of my participants were able to come out, we had a lot of fun removing invasive species from Lake Lotus Park. We were joined by Elizabeth, the SERV Coordinator, and two other volunteers from SERV. We pulled out several bags' worth of skunkvine, arrowhead vine, and another vine that I don't remember the name of. Julian and Tori did a great job, even in the face of giant mosquito bites on the neck. Although there were a lot more mosquitos and warmer weather, it gave my participants a good idea of what to expect when working with the New York Botanical Garden. (We also got to ride a very rickety Disney-type shuttle.)

Yes, this was the best picture I had from our shuttle ride.

Seed pods from one of the invasive species. They easily broke apart, so we had to be careful when pulling down vines.

The ABP and SERV team with our bagged plants!

I look forward to having all the participants together in the coming weeks. My team is mostly upperclassmen who are already engaged on campus (shout out to Julian and Sydney), so I'm excited to see what we can do! 

Nashville First Social

So, I'm super excited for our trip to Nashville to work with Nashville Rescue Mission. We had our first group social last Friday at Lazy Moon Pizza! It was a great opportunity to get to know one another better. We learned about each others' favorite meals to make to our favorite place to visit. We bonded over amazing pizza and fun conversation. 

We've also brainstormed going to Bonnaroo as a group next summer! This an amazing group of people that will be working with Nashville Rescue Mission this Winter Break! I'm looking forward to growing as a person and leader through this experience with this awesome group.

#ABP1415 #changeagents

Project H.O.P.E

I am having my first social THIS Saturday and I am SUPER excited! I had a fundraising event planned for October as our first event but unfortunately that  did not happen. But all is well and we now have TWO fundraising events for the month of November, which I am proud of. I think my participants are great. I find that giving incentives works. I told them if they responded within 48 hours I would give them a VUCF promo goodie bag. It worked for three of them but hey its something! I have not had any issues with someone not responding. OH I also met my faculty advisor who is super excited for her first ever ABP trip because one of her coworkers told her our program is great. So I will post on here again to let you all know how my social and fundraising events go next week. Super proud of everyone!
-Melissa Rosario

Meting the Team

One of the things I always liked about ABP is that it allows you to meet people you'd probably never otherwise encounter. That's why it was so exciting to get my participants and have our first couple events. I'm a junior biology major, but I have participants from every year, with majors ranging from film to finance, education to sports and exercise science. These are people who I never would have met if  not for ABP, but we are all united by a common interests in volunteering and the environment. And the more time we spend together, the more we find out we have in common! I am so glad that we are building our friendships, and I'm excited to get to know them further. Our next event is a volunteer event at the UCF Arboretum, and it should be fun (and an interesting glimpse into what our work over Spring break will be like) to see everyone get their hands dirty!

-Grace Avecilla, Get Your Hands Dirty: Conservation, Education, & Sustainability at LBEEC

Esperanza means Hope!

Team Esperanza!

Enriching with Esperanza had its first team meeting this past Sunday! After the obligatory awkward silences we did activities like FLASH where we all answer some fun random questions and of course we had a game that required eye -contact and yelling at the top of our lungs, ya know important first impression activities. We then moved onto an activity that can be, and I quote, "real deep". I asked each of my participants to draw however they see themselves on a piece of paper. Then, using three different colors, decorate their drawings with three core values they hold dear. I gave everyone about 10 minutes then we all went around and shared. We described why we drew ourselves the way we did and the three values that were most important to us. Some went really abstract (For example I drew my body as a spinning vinyl record) while some went more traditional. It was a wonderful exercise though because it let people get comfortable around each other and allow connections to be recognized and therefore strengthened. Team Esperanza is off to a great start and I can't wait to see where we go from here!

Breaking the ICE

UNKNIGHTED & FREE met up last week for Topper's and we had a blast. It is always interesting and exciting to get meet all of your participants and learn about where they came from. In the Spring, we will be working together to raise awareness of human trafficking in Savannah, Georgia. Our team will need to work weekly to learn about human trafficking around the world, build a cohesive unit, and enable individuals to live out the futures they deserve. We have a big mission to complete, but at VUCF we are Change Agents and this is our lifestyle. I am so excited to continue learning and serving along side my team! Stay tuned for more educational posts and events!

"The secret of freedom is courage." Dare to do what you have always imagined and never thought was possible this week.

With love,
Freedom

Tom's first blog post

My intro meeting was pretty exciting! Although only seven out of the ten participants  showed up, I am happy to have met them. They all seemed happy to be there, but pretty shy and reserved. Overall, I think they enjoyed themselves, as they were laughing quite a bit. By playing name games, stating highs and lows for the week, and doing two truths and a lie, we got to learn more about each other. I am so bad with names though, haha.

So at my first meeting I was pretty nervous because I hadn't met a few of my participants at the lottery night prior to the meeting in the honors college conference room. It was pretty snazzy though in the room because of the huge touch screen  computer in the conference room. I tried to have ambient music in the background with my alternative pandora station but it wasn't too long before I was playing with the volume up and down, as I was worried that It was too loud or soft. Overall, I think that it still lightened the mood and relieved tension, which is what the point of it was.

I am super excited for my first social tonight at lazy moon, as 9/10 of the participants will be there, since the 10th person is not even listed on my trip. This means that they are all pretty excited (I hope). I hope everyone gets along well but I am not really too worried. :) I really hope that I have all ten people eventually on my trip, but it would definitely be better to have nine people who are excited and really wanted the trip rather than ten people who are only slightly looking forward to it.