The Robinhood Project- Luis Rodriguez

I wasn't too sure what I could do additionally for this project, so I went ahead and documented something I already do almost every week. For a little context, I'd like to mention that I, alongside several others, work as a mentor with Mrs. Marcia Pomeroy, director of KUMC's Office of Cultural Enhancement. As part of her goal to better people's lives and provide diversity as well as educational enrichment, she directs a program called Saturday Academy. About two Saturdays a month, we have students from many high schools as well as middle schools attend math and science classes geared toward health education. A regular day at Saturday Academy may consist of breakfast, a team-builder exercise, either a math or health awareness class, lunch, poetry writings, recess, and then everything is wrapped up with the departure of students. A program as big as this requires a lot of planning and extra help. As mentioned before, I work as a mentor along with a few others to help set everything up for the day. We get up well in advance and get picked up in order to arrive at KCKCC before anyone else and get an idea of what will be going on throughout the day. Then, we get all the food and setup a line for breakfast and in the meantime get all the supplies that will be needed to carry out class operations. We also supervise while class is going on for example. Here, we are serving lunch and having a bit of fun by doing synchronized squatting after everyone has been served:

And here I am attempting to fix an issue with someone's laptop:

So, now that a bit of context has been established, I can say that this is merely superficial. There is a large network of programs that Ms. Pomeroy directs and organizes and as part of her goal to increase health awareness and to help people lead a healthier lifestyle, she supports a program called the Organic Teaching Gardens where every Tuesday mentors from her programs help out. In fact, anyone can contact Mrs. Pomeroy in order to receive community service hours if need be. Or, if you just want to help out and have a good time, that would be awesome as well. Basically, Mark Manning, who runs the Gardening program, sets up gardens at different middle schools where science teachers tie the program in with their curriculum so students can learn about plant parts and what it means to grow food organically. He sets up an array of different plants such as sweet potatoes, peanuts, cabbage, tomatoes, etc. and when they are harvested, the students are allowed to examine them and even consume them. That's where we come in. In order for the students to eat these foods, of course they have to be cooked and seasoned and all that stuff, but prior to that, they must be washed and on occasion peeled and sliced. So, these past few weeks we've been helping Mark do as such. Later on in the year we'll be separating worms from castings now that the cold weather has started to set in. Here are a few snaps of us cutting up sweet potatoes:

 And to top it off, here is a picture of a time when we invited professors as well as students from the Psychology Department of KU to take a look at what we do:

So, long story short, I help out Saturdays as a mentor, setting things up, storing things back where they belong, organizing and supervising. On Tuesdays, I do a bit of community service by helping prepare foods for educational purposes.