Alyssa is passionate about making the world a better place, and when she heard about the Common Good Project, the wheels in her head started turning.
This is my first year at Explo, and it’s really nice. I like the classes the most, especially the Psychopathology class and my gender identity class. I go to an international school, so it’s not too different from Explo. They encourage us to open our perspectives and broaden our thinking. I’m a sophomore now and I want to go to college for global studies and psychology.
Today for our community service project, my group went to Goodwill and helped organize the store. Prior to coming to Explo, I went to another program that had us do a week of community service, called Civic Week. I focused on human rights and urban affairs, and went to homeless missions. We served food and talked with the people there, and they put on homeless panels where people talked to us about their experiences being homeless. We also went to the Human Rights Campaign, and they taught us about the LGBTQ community.
With the Common Good Project, we were talking about different ways to help the community during our reflection time and I came up with an idea for a pad and tampon drive for homeless women who can’t afford them. Before I knew about the Common Good Project, I didn’t know I could create projects like this and get support starting it and making it known.
My idea came to me from a combination of the homeless panels I saw and a discussion I saw online about people bringing pads to women in prison. I hope to use the resources from Common Good to start a drive with the intent of eventually branching out into care packages.
I’ve just always wanted to help them out, but it wasn’t until I heard from homeless people firsthand. And then I realized that with the Common Good Project, I could do something to help. There are a lot of homeless shelters near my school and I think my school would be able to help facilitate this program.
Community service is something I want to continue to be a part of because I think it’s really important. I run a blog — I’m just starting up — but it attempts to end the stigma on depression and social anxiety by having people share their personal stories. We have one story up now, but I’m still working on collecting more, and then we’ll start sharing them on different platforms.
Ted Schaefer