Outside of work:
HFH Global Village trip- Alaska
It is therapeutic for me to get away from the computer every now and then.
In July of 2008, I traveled to Anchorage, Alaska to build houses for Habitat for Humanity's Global Village program. I was selected to be one of 17 participants via interview process. Over the two and a half weeks of being there, I met people from so many walks of life, gained invaluable knowledge on how to build a house — including learning to build walls by hand! — and became a bit of an insomniac with 19 hours of daylight per day.
This was also my first venture into blogging (from my iPhone, because we had no internet connection unless we went to the Internet Café down the street).
The strangest (but unexpectedly delicious) meal: reindeer sausage.
The team leaders asked if I could document the trip since I had my digital SLR by my side. It was my pleasure.
The Green Team: Baltimore, MD
East Baltimore is the poorest area of the city, with no funding for school buses, high drug problems and crime, an 8th grade average reading level, and poor health, despite the fact that Johns Hopkins Hospital is in the middle of the community.
In 2004, I was part of a coalition course with MICA and Johns Hopkins Medical Center. They had us create graphic campaigns based around known health problems in the community. Our specific semester was to educate the East Baltimore community on the effects of lead poisoning.
After my research, I realized that there was no real way to prevent lead exposure; instead, I had to educate them how to live with it. I turned my findings into a health and science project with 2nd graders from the Tench Tilghman Elementary School. In their class, I created lesson plans that focused on how to grow healthy foods in raised containers instead of the lead-contaminated soil. (Pamphlets and educational materials on the effects of lead poisoning were also provided.)
The project finished with the students planting seeds they grew in the classroom in a community garden down the street.
During that time, I also worked to receive donations from Wells Lamont (gardening gloves) and Johns Hopkins Research Center. In the end, the community, if at least for that week, came together and watched their children grow - literally and figuratively.
It's My Park! Day
For the last four years, I have made a point to volunteer with the Austin Parks Foundation's annual park cleanup event, titled It's My Park! Day. The actual duties range from building retaining walls to landscaping to clearing brush and trash. To date, I have worked on projects at Deep Eddy, Redbud Isle, and the Zilker Botanical Garden.
In 2009, they had a record year — over 2,500 volunteers cleaned up 60 parks in the Austin area.