Hello from Washington DC! The past three days have been busy and we have been having a lot fun! As a staff, we have been thoroughly impressed with how excited and engaged our participants have been so far.
By Sunday evening, all 18 participants had gathered at our dorm at George Washington University, gotten a campus tour from a GW Hillel student, and had a great first night dinner all together at an Italian restaurant! After playing some fun games to help us learn more about each other, we dove right into our focus of hunger and homelessness in DC and the US by tackling stereotypes of poverty and homelessness.
In our first two full days of volunteering, we have helped prepare meals at DC Central Kitchen which makes over 5,000 meals every single day of the year for different organizations, shelters, and programs around the city, served dinners at Central Union Mission, participated in an amazing workshop at an international street paper called Street Sense, and brought and served healthy meals to a few of DC's worst food deserts with Martha's Table.
Somehow between all of this amazing work, we have had time to explore a bit more of DC. With the opportunity to choose where we wanted to go at certain times, the teens have had the opportunity to see places such as the National Portrait Gallery, the International Spy Museum, DC's Chinatown area, and Arlington National Cemetery.
We are looking forward to an amazing rest of the program as we continue to volunteer with different organizations, challenge what we know to be true, and take in all that DC has to offer!