By Miyu Otani
Three guest speakers visited our class to tell their stories. Ann is the director of My Life, My Choice, and Joel and Amy are members of Learning by Giving Foundation. My Life My Choice is a non-profit organization that supports survivors in rebuilding their lives, finding their voice, and becoming leaders. They educate, train and mentor a lot of youth. On the other hand, Learning By Giving Foundation is the community that helps students become thoughtful and effective young leaders. Non-profit Giving class is connected Learning By Giving Foundation and will give us $10,000 to donate one non-profit organization. Nowadays, we are learning how to raise and use money and the important the pitch is.
With telling their stories, they told us "in-kind donations." The donation means not only giving money but also providing time, labor, people and mentoring. At the beginning of this semester, we learned about what donation means. Students answered it means smile, communication, housing and health besides time, and labor. At that time, I thought donation is just money and daily necessities. My knowledge of donation is wider than before, and classmates and I learned there are many ways to help people.
Since I take Nonprofit Giving class, I have been thinking what my special skills are. Many non-profit organizations want everyone to know that they are special, unique and different from others. However, it is difficult for me to find mine. Ann told me that people can find their special skills from who they have met and what they have done. Moreover, Amy taught us about her experience. When she joined the non-profit organization, she found that it is a good place to find what she wants to. That is because it is easy to try new things in non-profit organizations. Non-profit organizations are flexible to start something new. I am sure that challenging something new is the key to find my strengths. Just trying can bring us a great opportunity.
We started fundraising after the spring break. We will do a bake sale, garage sale and pie throwing for fundraising. We are looking forward to fundraising because doing something with classmates is fun and I feel we are the team. We are willing to help with the fundraising. We are sure fundraising will make it and this opportunity will be a great experience in our life.
