Volunteering around NOLA

KIPP Leadership Primary - March 4th, 2013 - 2.5 hours

Common Ground Health Clinic - March 5th, 2013 - 3 hours

Common Ground Health Clinic - March 8th, 2013 - 2 hours

KIPP Leadership Primary - March 11th, 2013 - 2.5 hours

KIPP Leadership Primary - March 18th, 2013 - 2.5 hours

  

Heading into March, I knew I would need some productive study breaks while preparing for the Pharmacology Shelf exam. I figured the best way to do that was to head over to KIPP Leadership Primary and Common Ground Health Clinic to volunteer my time. 

One of the 4 cabinets of
student and staff uniforms.

Paul cutting reward
dollars

As usual my time at KIPP this month revolved around helping the teachers and administrators with any extra tasks they had. On March 4th, this included taking inventory of the student and staff uniforms and cutting "dollars" as rewards for the students. The first task took a surprisingly long time, as I had to count, organize and document all of the shirts and cardigans. On a separate visit I spent my time clearing up a large work space, making teacher gift packages and taking inventory of/organizing the massive bookshelf of knick-knacks and useful teacher supplies. March 18th I ended up volunteering alone and spent time doing multiple little tasks: putting together file organizers, cleaning nap mates and keyboards, reorganizing work-space, etc.

 

All of our reward dollars!

 

Myself, Paul and Sheeva after a morning of volunteering, and
in our "Love" shirts :)

 

Organizing the storage shelves of knick-knacks.

 

Teacher-appreciation packages I put together. I knew learning
how to curl ribbon would come in handy one day!

Just a neat shelf of some of
the mixtures that the
herbalists use on a
daily basis.

I didn't have as much of a chance to volunteer at CGHC, but I did spend some time helping the outreach team earlier in the month. One day a large group of spring-breakers from Michigan were at the clinic helping out with a survey. A local group has been knocking on doors, collecting signatures to have more community-member seats opened on the city council. Because I had my laptop with me, I helped enter the information of all those who had signed the petition while the students went out into the neighborhood to collect more signatures. On my second visit to the clinic, I was lucky enough to attend one of the CGHC Board Meetings. I had the chance to meet the mamy health-care providers and CGHC staff and learn about the different projects that are going on. A few Tulane Public Health students have joined the clinic for their internship experience, and they are starting some exciting projects, such as a Hispanic community worker training to better reach this often under-served community.