Natalie and I decided to switch up the stamping patterns that we did. We made a list of the ones that we liked but came up with a sun, dove, raincloud, and star. They each have their individual meanings and we were able to invest in those meanings. It was hard for us last time to find things to write in the actual card since we already typed so much into the descriptions. So this time we tried to make the descriptions better in a way where it was simply describing what the symbol on the front meant. This left more room for us to encourage them in the portion that we were actually hand writing. Light. It seems pretty normal to think about. You see it through a flashlight, a candle, the sunlight. Something really cool about light is that no matter how dark it is, the light always conquers over the darkness. If you’re in a completely dark room and someone turns on a flashlight, it suddenly lights the way. Darkness never conquers the light when added to it, but light always conquers the darkness. We didn't put a description for the dove! We just agreed that we would mention that a dove symbolizes peace and we would just describe how they can chase after the peace in life. "When thinking of a rain cloud, it may remind you of the cheesy movies where the rain cloud is hovering over the top of someone as they walk down the street. It may remind you of sadness or give you a depressing kind of vibe. Although, without the rain cloud, flowers would never be able to grow, we wouldn’t be supplied with the amount of drinking water that we need, grass wouldn’t be green, crops wouldn’t be able to grow. There are so many good things that come from this cloud that may appear to hold so much sadness in the meaning." "There are 100 thousand million stars in each of the 100 billion galaxies. There are stars that are bigger than earth, galaxies five times bigger than the single one we live in, and three planets bigger than earth- just in our solar system. We are barely a speck on the map. Think about your size in this massive, great world- and yet, think of how important you are. Find the hope, the possibility, and the potential this world offers you, and remember the great things you can do in it. The world can get dark, but don’t forget, your light always prevails." These were the captions that we printed out for the cards! We carved out the shapes into the molds and they are super detailed and cool so we are so excited to see how they turn out!! Looking forward for impacts and tons of cards to come :-)
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Since our last update, we've made a ton of progress. We've been running out our cards to Mrs. Robinson as we've started to finish them and as of today we have sent out 31 cards. We've been in communication with Mrs. Robinson and she's gotten the cards to each person from the classroom that they were in. We would give them personally people but we wanted to keep it anonymous and add a more surprise element to the whole process. At the end of each working period, we would bring what we finished in class down to the office to be delivered to each person. We've gotten to the point where we just hand them to Mrs. Robinson, give her a nod, and just walk out haha. We've been completing them little by little and some days we are more productive than others but each day we are sending out letters as they are on their way for impact. Natalie and I were thinking of a way that we could contact the people that we are sending cards to, while still keeping our name anonymous. We came to a conclusion of possibly starting a Remind101 account. We put little sticky notes on the inside telling them that if they needed to connect in any way for any reason, that they could join our remind. This way, they still wouldn't know our name but they would have an outlet in case they needed a peer to talk to whenever they were struggling. We've had 15/31 people join our remind and a few reached out to us. Nat and I have passed people in lunch that were studying our card trying to figure out who "H.H + N.C" could be. It kind of felt like an undercover encourager cop kind of thing. Hahaha. But then...we kind of got exposed! We kind of went into panic mode for a little bit because we realized that now everyone that this girl followed on Instagram knew about our under-cover encouragement (hahaha). But- we just rolled with it and thought that instead of putting our initials, we might just put a heart or something maybe less obvious! We hope that people would feel more special thinking that they received this letter from a complete stranger. It was really cool to see the impact that it made on this girl though. We are hoping to keep the impact rolling. :-)
After getting our results from the google survey forms, Natalie and I were very pleased with the amount of responses we got, but we were also shocked with the results. Most people noted that they struggle with what people think of them or the way that they thought of themselves. After a brainstorm of ideas, Natalie and I decided that we would cut a bunch of colored papers in half and begin the foundation of our cards. We realized how truly time consuming this whole process would be but we were confident in what our plan was. We met with the art teacher, Mrs. Hart, and she suggested that we did stamping on the fronts of the cards in order to make the process smoother and quicker. She provided us with these rubber squares and a special tool to carve out our stamps. Mr. Large was also generous in providing us with new paint, a roller, colored pencils, markers, and paper. After spending time searching for certain things to carve out, Natalie and I decided that we wanted to correlate the symbol on the front of each card to a piece of symbolism that could encourage them. We carved out a butterfly, a bowl, a lotus flower, and a wave. To save more time, we decided to type out little descriptions for each symbol and print one for each card. This way, we could take more time to personalize the letter and the front of the card. Our descriptions were the following:
Currently our progress has increased exponentially and we have stamped over 100 cards and decorated the fronts of around 20. We are so excited to distribute some cards this week and encourage lots of people!!
After many project attempts and fails, Natalie Cramer and I both decided that we were both extremely passionate about encouraging others and making them feel loved and cared about. Originally, we were going to do music therapy at Woodland Terrace, Springhurst, and other nursing homes. We planned on visiting the least visited people there and investing in their lives. We were also going to do group music and add some dance moves every now and then. We would also get different crafts together that we would work on with them. These crafts would contribute into the music and would be an interactive way for residents to get involved in the music. Weekly, we would take song requests and craft requests. Our goal was to make residents feel loved and to give them something to look forward to. Natalie and I both have/have had family members in nursing homes. We've often seen other residents depressed because they feel as though they are forgotten and purposeless due to their infrequent visitation rate. We felt on our heart that we wanted to use our passion of encouragement towards this project. The administrators were all in for this, too. Though, there were many complications with what we were planning on doing, like activity directors switching out of their positions in both nursing homes, certain directors on vacation, etc. So, we decided to put that plan in our back pocket and pick up a new plan. In the middle of our chaotic project jumble, the "Get Schooled" tour came to speak to our class. This tour basically raises awareness towards mental health. Natalie and I felt so emotionally moved by the discussion and it broke our hearts that people feel so attacked by the lie that they are not loved, or not worthy, etc. There were so many statistics that really hit our hearts hard: -30% of students reported of being abused -Almost 80% of students report to having struggled with anxiety in some way -Over 62% of students report having felt any type or depression in the last 30 days -27% of students choose to not talk to anyone if they are struggling -Over 65% of students have thoughts of suicide You never know what someone could be dealing with- and that's when we got a new idea for our project. Random Acts of Encouragement. We decided to meet with the councilor at school and present our idea to her. We wanted to bless peoples' days, without reason. Mrs. Lightcap, Natalie and I's councilor, suggested reaching out to the freshman class first and then moving onto sophomores, then juniors, then seniors. She emailed us a roster of the whole freshman class. Natalie and I made a google survey form that gives students the multiple choice options of what they struggle with most, what they like to do, what they don't like to do, etc. This way, we would know in what ways they are in need of encouragement and what kinds of small gifts that each person would like. Our goal is around 20 encouraged people each week. Natalie and I have a huge goal and our eyes are set on impact. :-)
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