ECAP Reflection
For our service project The Flower Beauties had a different approach than most groups! We were originally supposed to work with Glenside Elementary and help them with their Garden Club and help them grow the program by planting flowers and interacting with the students. Flower Beauties were so excited as we went over for a meeting and met with the Vice Principal who helped us understand what we would be doing. From there, those of us who did not have our clearances went and got them in order to be able to work with the students. It was about a little more than halfway through the semester when Amanda got an email from Glenside saying the women who runs the Garden Club had to leave because of an emergency leave and the garden club would be canceled for this semester. From there, Amanda tried getting in contact with the Vice Principal to see if there was some other project The Flower Beauties could do at Glenside. It tooks weeks for her to get back to Amanda and she stated she actually was not at Glenside for the rest of the semester as she stepped in as the Principal at a different location. This became a little bit of a problem for our group, however thanks to Dr. Kazempour things ended up working out in our favor. Dr. Kazempour worked with us and did her best to find ways for us to make up our hours which was really helpful and gave us reassurance with our project.
We then helped out at Earthfest on campus on April 18, 2018 and we helped promote the great events going on that day. We handed out pencils which had seeds to plant in them, raffle tickets, and spoke to students about the different stations in Perkins. One of our favorite stations at Earthfest was the plastic bottle greenhouse which consisted of recycled plastic bottles and bamboo, it was such a great concept! Following that, on April 20th, 2018 we also helped out all day at The Earth Day Event which involved Glenside Elementary fifth grade students who came for the day to participate in activities here at Berks.We taught them all about our environment and ways to improve upon it and try to help them understand ways to make the environment a better place. Students were split into groups where we helped guide small ice-breaker activities with them and they also did rock painting and got a tour of the greenhouse on campus. This entire ECAP project really did open all of our eyes and helped us make changes in the environment. It really was a great feeling to be able to inform the Glenside students on Earth Day and teach them about the environment. Seeing how excited they were and eager to learn about everything brought satisfaction to all of us, it felt like we were really making a difference. Regardless of the bumpy start that we had when beginning this project, The Flower Beauties are so grateful for the opportunity that we got to still be able to not only help the environment, learn more along the way but also being able to interact and teach students was a great growing opportunity for all of us. We think this all together turned out to be great, informative, and helpful to the environment in making these minor changes! We realized that everyone can have an impact on the environment even by making small changes every single day. Small changes can lead to huge improvements!
