Kelsey Yeager is a senior at Damascus High School. She is interested in majoring in environmental science and marketing when she attends college. She found out about SLP from an alumn of the program, and was really excited when she found out that this year they would work on hunger and homelessness issues.
Avanti Mehta is a senior at Clarksburg High School. She is planning on majoring in pre med and anthropology next year in college. She found about the SLP program from her school counselor and loves being a part of the program. Learning about hunger and homelessness has definitely influenced her desire to help others.
On Wednesday, December 7, 2011, Sodexo, YSA, and Share Our Strength teamed up with the SLP of Montgomery County to have an informative discussion about hunger and homelessness issues. SLP is an honors career and leadership development program for Montgomery County high school seniors. The program allows students to acquire an internship reflective of entry-level work performed by college graduates and participate in interactive seminars and community projects. This year, our SLP class is doing a Hunger and Homelessness project. We focus on fighting hunger in Montgomery County, with a strong emphasis on childhood hunger.
Going into the Sodexo meeting as a mere high school senior was nerve-racking to say the least. Our SLP group met with and present to Sodexo executives about our efforts to combat hunger and homelessness. We have accomplished a lot already, such as donating our time and resources to volunteering at A Wider Circle adopting two families. However, we were still worried that they would view us simply as “kids. ” To our surprise, the meeting surpassed even the highest of our expectations! The executives were great; they all were very friendly, intelligent, and inspiringly supportive. We discussed how to be the best leaders we could be, how to make the most out of our internship experience, and how to solve issues regarding hunger in our county. We were astonished to find out one out of five children in the United States are not able to get enough food and even more astonished to find out that statistic used to be one out of four children!
We also simulated buying food on a low income family’s budget; we only had a small amount of money each week to allocate for food. Despite trying our best to consider factors such as variety and nutrition, we had to make the decision to skip one meal because we couldn’t afford it. We have always known that hunger was a serious issue, but it did not truly hit home until we put ourselves in their shoes. Now, knowing exactly how big the issues of hunger and homelessness are, we feel so proud that our group is actually making a difference.
Like our Facebook page to stay updated about our project and see our activities: SLP’s Help the Homeless Awareness Project .
Find out more about YSA’s Sodexo School Engagement grants here: http://www.ysa.org/grants/sodexoschool.
