Bomie Lee (IP 2014-15) wrote a blog post reflecting on her experience doing community service, which is an important part of the WLP experience:
Throughout this year, I have been volunteering with the U.S. Dream Academy, an organization that reaches out to middle school and elementary students with incarcerated family members and provides an after school program with workshops, online learning courses, tutoring sessions, and games to help them realize and achieve their dreams. This community service experience has allowed me to be paired up with a student and serve as a mentor to her, and it has been an absolute pleasure to work with her and to see her grow.
Just this past Friday, our Dream Kids visited GW as one of the offered field trip options during their spring break. We creatively showed them around campus through a scavenger hunt in which they matched the descriptions provided in the clues to the school buildings. We divided the kids into two separate teams, and the other mentors and I split off accordingly to help and lead them through the process. Afterwards, we had lunch together in a classroom, and then sat down to watch the “Save the Arts” protest that had been taking place all throughout the day. Our Dream Kids were able to see multiple musical and theatrical student organizations perform, and hopefully were able to take away that students can and should make their voices heard.
Being a part of this yearlong volunteer experience has allowed me to learn so much about incarceration and education, specifically as pertaining to DC. Education clearly plays a crucial role in preventing incarceration, and given that many of our kids are falling behind in terms of learning expectations, the U.S. Dream Academy has really stepped in to provide academic and moral support. Prevention programs such as the U.S. Dream Academy may not always seem as if they bring about the most tangible and measureable change, but I have come to realize that these efforts to work side-by-side with young lives to guide and empower them have lifelong ramifications. I believe that the popularly quoted proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child,” cannot be any more accurate, and I know that the efforts of college students to mentor these kids and be positive role models to them will be well worth the time and effort.
I hope that their visit to GW, in particular, allowed them to recognize that they can achieve the same things, and more, as the mentors whom they look up to. I really adore these kids (they are so precious and sweet!) and I am constantly encouraged by the relationships I was able to build with them and the interactions that we have.
