CAMP REACH MORE CHALLENGES YOUTH TO REACH HIGHER

(Guest blog by Gina Wiezel , MTCC AmeriCorps VISTA Summer Associate with Missoula Parks and Recreation)

The Montana CampusCompact Summer VISTA and AmeriCorps Program offers Montana students and residents the opportunity to serve in their local communities, or across the state, to help run summer learning loss prevention camps, summer feeding programs, and summer college prep camps. This summer 53 national service members participated in diverse activities to help Montana community organizations fight local poverty, including increasing tutoring and mentoring resources, managing various summer activities and support services for children and families, supporting feeding programs to help alleviate hunger within the community, mobilizing hundreds of volunteers to assist with events, developing programs to help literacy rates among disadvantaged youth, and planning for future VISTA members’ efforts. We’d like to highlight one particular story from a member serving with the MissoulaParks and Recreation REACH MORE program.

The overall goal of our program is to support youth with disabilities in recreation summer enrichment programs to increase the chances of succeeding in and outside the classroom. Our program is incredibly successful.  We serviced 130 youth in the REACH MORE program, our 10 week summer program, that might of otherwise struggled to find summer enrichment programming appropriate least restrictive learning environments and abilities. Research has found that people with disabilities often fall within poverty guidelines.  Providing community based inclusive summer services has proven to enrich and increase their school and social behaviors and lead to a stronger likelihood for job placement.

During my time serving with REACH MORE, a Missoula Parks and Recreation camp for children of all abilities,  I had the opportunity to work with a diverse group of children. One boy came to our camp for multiple weeks. Every week we have our campers do a ropes course. The first few weeks that this boy was in camp he didn’t want to climb at all, preferring to just watch. After two weeks of him not engaging and not participating in the ropes course the other counselors and I decided that we would push him a little to try climbing the rock wall. We told him that he only had to take 2 steps and after that if he chose not to climb for the rest of the day he didn’t have to. That day and he only climbed two steps, but last week we had him try again. We had a great group of kids and they all cheered for each other. With everyone cheering, he climbed about halfway on the wall.

      I think this kid got stuck in a pattern of believing himself incapable of doing certain things, but once he had people believing in him, encouraging him to try his best he discovered that he was capable of climbing more than just the two steps we were challenging him to. With everyone cheering he pushed himself to go higher.

This experience taught me that it is important to have people that support you to challenge yourself and that when you decide to challenge and believe in yourself you can accomplish a lot. Too often we focus on what we can’t do and forget how much we truly are able to accomplish.  We put limits upon ourselves and don’t appreciate our capabilities. We fall into patterns and routine and don’t push ourselves or try situations that test our abilities. I believe it is important to challenge ourselves to things that may be difficult or scary, because when we challenge ourselves we discover capabilities we might not have known that we possessed. 

The ropes course in general taught me that it is important to challenge myself, to not compare and weigh my successes against others, that it is okay to step back from a challenge, and that if I don’t succeed or go as far with my ambitions the first time around that I can come back and perhaps will go further or accomplish more. I also learned that it is okay to not get as far as I wanted or expected. What is important is not how far you come, but how much you tried and how much effort you put into getting to where you are.

MTCC VISTA AUBREE PIERCE TRAVELS TO INDY!

Guest Blogger: MTCC VISTA Aubree Pierce
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The BoBPantry at MSU relies upon student support and enthusiasm for the project. Not just as volunteers during pantry operating hours, but to help spread awareness of food insecurity and food waste on campus and to break down the stigma around hunger and receiving food assistance. The Food Resource Council student club is the driving force, the lifeblood, and the reason why the BoB Pantry has been so successful during its pilot year.

Over the weekend of March 24th-25th, 2018 I traveled to the Campus Kitchens Food Waste and Hunger Summit in Indianapolis with my VISTA supervisor, who is also the faculty advisor for the Food Resource Council (FRC) student club, along with three other students who are part of the FRC leadership team. This experience gave these students an opportunity to hear about other initiatives to alleviate food waste and food insecurity nationwide and helped reinvigorate their passion for the work that we are doing through the BoB Pantry.

At this conference, the FRC students and I presented on the Bounty of the Bridgers MSU Food Pantry, and we held a problem-solving decision making open house session. We asked that attendees of the session pair up, present a problem or obstacle that they have been facing to their partner, and discuss potential solutions with their partner. This activity gave individuals an opportunity to receive an outside perspective on obstacles or barriers that they have been facing and a chance to talk about their problems with someone new. Our presentation also provided perspective on our pantry model that some in their beginning stages may take direction from. My supervisor attended this conference in 2017, and she said, “It’s amazing to see how far we have come in the last year. When we were here last year, we were the ones asking the questions and now we are the ones answering the questions.”

We also had the opportunity to learn about the campus pantry at IUPUI, the host college for the conference. This pantry is in the stage that the BoB Pantry is currently transitioning into, so being able to network with the pantry coordinators at this site and familiarize myself with their operations was exceptionally beneficial to beginning planning the BoB Pantry’s phase 2 operations.

This was a wonderful experience to share with the students and for myself as a young professional. I am happy that the students were able to immerse themselves for a weekend into these important issues motivating them to keep working diligently to improve food security and food access. This conference exposed me to several national initiatives to combat hunger on college campuses and boosted my enthusiasm for and dedication to alleviating food insecurity. I hope that next year’s VISTA for this project will have the opportunity for this experience as well.

MTCC VISTA SUPPORTS VETERAN CENTER AT MSU

On Monday, January 8, the Veteran Support Center kicked off a semester long effort aimed at encouraging financial literacy among veteran students. The inaugural event was the Financial Success Summit, which covered scholarships, loans, and entrepreneurship. Subsequent events throughout the semester will have narrower focuses. Connor Harbison, the MTCC AmeriCorps VISTA serving at the MSU Blackstone LaunchPad, supported the staff at the Veteran Support Center, in order to put all of MSU’s resources to work for veteran students.

“Working with veteran and non-traditional aged students, finances can be a big source of stress,” said Joe Schumacher, Director of Veteran Services. “Any resources we can give them to remove that stress means they can focus on other things, like academics.”

The Financial Success Summit gathered veteran students, financial advisers, university administrators, and student loan experts together to share knowledge and empower the veteran student population. MSU has an unusually high concentration of veteran students, and veterans are a core constituency of Connor’s VISTA Assignment Description, or VAD. This makes for an ideal common cause between the Blackstone LaunchPad and the Veteran Support Center.

About three dozen students gathered for the pre-orientation event, which was held in the MSU Strand Union Building. Connor Harbison, one of the MTCC AmeriCorps VISTAs serving on campus, attended and gave a few brief remarks on the resources available at his service site, the Blackstone LaunchPad. Judging by the question and answer session, as well as walk-in visitors at the LaunchPad after the event, this outreach was a success.

“As a veteran student and entrepreneur, the resources at Montana State University, especially in the Veteran Support Center and the Blackstone LaunchPad, have been crucial, both now and in the past,” said James Rolin, founder of Cowboy Cricket Farms, a venture that works with the Blackstone LaunchPad.

The Financial Success Summit is just one of many collaborative events between the Blackstone LaunchPad and the Veteran Support Center. Connor has worked closely with Joe and the rest of the staff during the first six months of service. In the spring semester, this partnership will continue, with weekly outreach hours and a monthly sack lunch, focusing on a specific aspect of entrepreneurship. The goal of this effort is to retain more veteran students and ultimately prevent veterans from falling into poverty.

About the Blackstone LaunchPad: The Blackstone LaunchPad at Montana State University, housed under the Jake Jabs College of Business and Entrepreneurship, is an entrepreneur resource for students, alumni, and faculty across the university and community that offers coaching, ideation, and venture creation support.