Category Archives: Trek2017

Beauty Night Experience – ABentley

 

Hello everyone !

As a first-year university student at UBC, I was very excited to explore the different opportunities the university offered to the students. When I first looked into the Coordinated Arts Program, I thought that the global citizen was the most interesting one for me having lived in several different countries. I decided to move to Vancouver to see the west coast of Canada. As I started sociology, professor Greer gave us the option to do this program called TREK under the Centre for Community Engaged Learning. This gave me an opportunity to learn about Vancouver as a city but also the struggles that lower-income people face today in society. At first, I thought it would require volunteering at the community center once a week to help others in need. However I discovered that it was a lot more than helping others, this opportunity has lead me to understand today’s capitalistic society. Most people that we meet live in shelters and are women. Some of the women also have children under the ages of 4.

I was placed with Beauty Night Society which is a non-profit organization that builds self-esteem and changes lives of women and living in poverty. There are three streams including wellness, life skill development, and makeovers that help woman along with their journey. I partake in the beauty services that they provide such as mini manicure and pedicures and massages. Most of the time, offering these services brings a lot of joy to these women. Another part of this position is to be good listeners. As volunteers, we engage with the woman to let them have an opportunity to rant about their lives and blow off steam. The experience I had with Beauty Night has made me understand several sociological concepts that we have covered in class.

Beauty Night exists because we have a lack of resources to share with all women from different social classes or racial looks. I think that these types of organizations are due to out capitalistic society. We often praise our society of being a free compared to communist countries. However, we realize often that our society isn’t as free as we believe it to be.

As we talked about in class about the ‘bystander effect‘where no one takes responsibility if there are lots of people involved. But working with beauty night makes us realize that there is something that we can do about it and it starts now.

The women that we are doing makeovers either live in shelters, or in rehabilitation in hospital. Women shelters are really young women originally from other countries, elderly women who broke their hip and others who are suffering from mental illness. Beauty night happens every single day of the week at different locations, mostly on the Vancouver Downtown Eastside. The woman who has children are vulnerable. We can see the gender wage gap.Women are inclined to stop working after having kids to take care of them however they do not have the resources to stop and take care of their child.

The single parent who is in poverty are generally women who have just immigrated from another country. I had a conversation with a lady from Morocco. She said that she had immigrated to Canada for her children. She claimed that there was not a future for her kids in Morocco. I asked her if she worked here, she responded that sometimes she would be called in to do manicures at a place downtown. This relates to what we have mentioned in class ‘ immigrated women’ who work in bad working conditions. This lady is lucky to have legal immigrant status compared to women who do not have papers to prove their legal identity.

We have also discussed the use of drugs. In one of the Beauty Night sessions, there was a poster on the wall cautiously advising people to be careful where you procure your drugs. Someone has been targeting women. As a class, we mentioned the importance of having a place where it would be safe to take drugs with good lighting and first aid nearby for emergencies. This is a great way for drug users to be safe and clean.

Overall, Beauty Night has been an incredible learning experience where I learned more about Vancouver, but also more about our society.

 

Beauty Night- A Look into the Past and a Dive Forward by Hannah Edward

As a high school student who did not volunteer as much as would have liked to, I was eager to get involved at UBC. The TREK program was the first opportunity that I was made aware of through an email from my sociology teacher in the Summer before classes started. Reading the description, TREK seemed like a great opportunity to get to know the various communities and cultures in the city that I grew up in, which was a reason why I wanted to attend UBC in the first place. It all seemed to line up perfectly. Without hesitation I signed up, and now I have been given the chance to reflect on it; a look into the past.

There were good times, even better times, not so great times, but all were significant in the developing of knowledge regarding myself and my surroundings. I volunteered with Beauty Night Society, a non-profit organization which was founded in 2000 by a Vancouverite named Carolyn MacGillivray, who to this day is still very active in the organization.  I had come across Beauty Night when I was in high school, searching the web for volunteer opportunities. I can honestly say that out of all the organizations I came across, this is the only one that resided with me, and that was because it was different. It stood out because its mission statement was unlike all the other ones I had read which is “[building] self esteem and [changing] lives of women and youth living in poverty through 3 streams of programming: wellness, life skills development and makeovers”. It caters to a need which is often neglected in todays society. Many non-profit organizations work to improve healthcare, overcome hunger, homelessness and more, which is great to find an abundance of these in the Vancouver area. However, what I discovered in my time volunteering is that Beauty Night takes the people (specifically women and children) who are subject to these hardships and grants them the opportunity to socialize and form relationships making its overarching goal to treat the social needs of these individuals as opposed to solely the physical. I found it interesting that this organization went full circle and ended up finding me through TREK.

I felt comfort seeing something familiar while attending university even though I was a while away from home. Also, being surrounded by a crowd who is similarly interested in getting involved on campus was comforting. Whenever there was a TREK workshop, the volunteers all stuck together and got along really well. These monthly meetings made me aware of the variety of community on campus and in the Vancouver area. Both getting to know the volunteers and also getting to know the Vancouver community through hearing about their  experiences at their sites enabled me to learn in depth about the types of people on campus and in the community. I was aware that Vancouver and UBC has a very diverse population, but TREK enabled me to encounter these individuals on a more personal level. Some of the volunteers were international students and before attending university, I did not come across many. At Beauty Night, I met women who had faced problems such as physical and drug abuse. These are things I had only heard about on the news or through stories. I was only aware before, but after TREK, I became embedded in the diversity.

Entering the field, I had zero experience giving massages, foot scrubs, manicures and all things similar. A couple months into volunteering and I realize the true role which volunteers are meant to serve; which is accompaniment. These ladies do not have much contact with the outside world and Beauty Night gives them fresh faces to get to know. Almost every session I attended had a handful of woman eager to socialize and did not even bother getting any treatment done. At these points I realized the need of these women to be heard, thus enabling them to feel relevant, important, and overall cared for. All of these I, a single volunteer, was fulfilling only by being present in the conversations. These are conversations which lead to connections, leading to relationships, and inevitably leading to their mental wellbeing and overall fulfillment. These conversations are important to have, because they lead to emotional healing, healthy relationships and contentment.

Not only did my work at Beauty Night positively affect these women, but also did a service to my mental wellbeing as a student in university. Although I strongly and thoroughly enjoyed my first year at UBC, I felt like I often lost myself in the university lifestyle—being overly concerned with grades, resume building, thinking abut how to become the best student possible and about my future and how university would define it. This mindset consumes so many students (you can hear these conversations just walking around campus) and slowly I fell under the influence of it. It just seemed like university promoted this sameness among students, who all strived for similar things because of the environment that the university structure created. In sociology, Weber’s idea of the types of cages- the rubber one to be exact- reminded me of my experience between school and volunteering. The cage with rubber bars symbolizes the trap that is homogeneity and a life that is ordinary and repetitive, but can still be escaped through disengaging with societal structure. Beauty Night served as an escape from that part of university life. If anything, it kept me in check and reminded me to reflect on my motives for attending university, which was to gain new experiences and add to the adventure that is life. It reminded me that I was unique and me as an individual can invoke change by working toward a cause I care deeply about. As I attempted to reach the hearts of these women, their responses touched mine. I went to volunteer on my birthday because it fell on a Monday, which was the normal day I would go. I willingly went because I wanted to do something that would make me happy on this special day, and going to Beauty Night always put a smile on my face.

Through sociology class I have also learned about societal structure and its impacts on individuals; whether good, bad or neutral. This lens has helped me understand the reasons why these women end up in these group homes. There are specific reasons for their misfortune identified and defined in sociology. Structuralism is a central idea in sociology that claims society to be a defining factor of ones personal life. In terms of poverty, structuralism blames society for the misfortune of those experiencing it. In order for me to truly understand this concept, I would need to see it for myself. That is what Beauty Night enabled me to do. This dominant idea which was emphasized in class became a reality to me, and I can now say with confidence that the fault does not often lie with the individual. The women in Beauty Night mention their past often and how their parents were unable to be present or were too destructive to be around, and I can see the scars it has left—whether mental or emotional. The structure of society has kept many people among their own crowd and limited the opportunity for a change in lifestyle.

There is my past and society’s past. I was once just beginning my university experience with absolutely no idea where it would take me, but I knew that it would take me. That’s the difference between my past and the past of these women in the downtown east side, being how the system they grew up in is filled with large uncertainty. I aim to continue volunteering and unite my life with the lives of those who are treated by Beauty Night, so that we can dive forward together. Even though my past largely differs from most of theirs (being born into different circumstances) I hope to offer some sort of aid in declaring to be a part of their future. No matter how little or big the help is, it shouldn’t matter because outreach is something that just needs to be done without measure.

My experience with Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House

As a part of TREK this year, I volunteered at the Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House. I decided to choose this as my first choice, after navigating thoroughly through their website, because their mission is something that reflected my goal for TREK: Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House plays a leadership role in creating our community together by connecting people and strengthening their capacity to create change. After a few days of waiting, I was offered an interview. During this interview I was told that I would be involved in a placement that would provide working opportunities for disadvantaged people who seek employment. This placement is focused around a project called Luv the Grub. The people who a part of this project make jam and chutneys from bumped or bruised fruits and vegetables that did not make it to be sold in the market. My involvement in this project was the media aspect. I helped manage the Instagram account for Luv the Grub and take photographs of the jams and chutneys. This helped raise awareness to the project and hopefully increase the sales.

At the beginning of term two I was attended one of the neighbourhood houses events to help sell the jams and chutneys. At this event, I not only learned more about the project I was a part of, but I also learned more about the community and the people both living there, and the people helping those who are disadvantaged. It was very interesting to how diverse the projects were. There were some people who were selling soaps, jewelry, paintings, knitted clothes, etc. I really appreciated meeting other people who had the same goals of bettering the community as I did, and learning more about how other people’s projects tackle some of the issues that are prevalent in the community. This also made me appreciate how much time and effort goes into starting this projects and continuing to raise awareness about them.

My personal experience in TREK has helped me learn more about the variety of ways I can help improve the community and help the people around me. Being a part of the Luv the Grub project in particular has been a foundation for inspiring me to do more volunteer work in the future. 

I am extremely sad to say goodbye to the people who have made my experience with Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House a memorable time. For those of you who may in interested to learn more about Luv the Grub, I will leave their social media links below! I would also like to thank my mentor, Sylvia, for giving me the opportunity to pursue my interests (social media and photography) and using my skills for a great cause.

Strathcona Backpack Program

Hi there!

My name is Ben Stanislawski. Throughout my first year in university, I have been participating in the Trek Program as a volunteer for the Strathcona Backpack Program. As the year has progressed, I have benefited greatly from my time in the program and I am writing here to hopefully garner some interest for future students.

Map of Vancouver. Strathcona is located in the North Eastern section of the map, just east of Downtown and north of Mount Pleasant.

The Backpack Program is run out of the Strathcona Community Centre (SCC), led by Lauren Brown. Lauren and a team of volunteers work together every week to prepare packages of healthy food to be donated to families across the Strathcona neighborhood who are in need. The premise behind the program relates to the fact that many poor kids receive free or subsidized lunches throughout the school week, however, throughout the weekend, they do not have this support and are often left on their own. If the child’s parents are in dire financial circumstances, they will often turn to fast food or other unhealthy options as a way to feed their kids. Children need healthy food to grow successfully, and the Backpack Program was designed in order to fill that void. Through donations from local grocery stores and businesses, the program donates baskets of fresh produce, vegetables, and dry goods to families throughout the neighborhood of Strathcona.

Packed baskets of food on a Thursday afternoon, ready for pickup on Friday

As a volunteer, I went to the community centre once a week throughout the school year for packing sessions. I worked with other volunteers to sort out the baskets for various families/communities and allocate each the proper amount of food for the number of children. Some families have up to 7 kids, so a lot of food needs to be delivered in order to keep all the children healthy and full. On Fridays, there is a market for program participants where they can come and pick up all the food they need for the weekend. While I never actually met any of the families receiving the food, it felt very good to be a part of something bigger that was having a positive effect on the larger community.

In our sociology class we have recently covered topics relating to poverty and income. This is an especially relevant topic for Vancouver, due to the large amounts of homelessness afflicting the city, predominantly near Downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods. According to the SCC’s website, “The Downtown Eastside Strathcona neighbourhood is part of the V6A area code, which records the lowest mean incomes in all of Canada.” The poverty is truly widespread, making childhood in Strathcona extremely difficult. One of the most basic human needs is to have something to eat, to be properly fed. In order to do basically anything else in your life, you need food, and the reality in places like Strathcona right now is that many people do not have that bare minimum. In class we learned that poverty is regional, and most likely in urban areas. This often relates to the family situation of those afflicted, such as a single parent household (typically single mothers). The nature of this poverty is systemic, and organizations like this one are doing their part to help mitigate the pain.

It is sad to be leaving Strathcona, but I am happy with how my time here has gone and the work that I have done. If anyone has any questions about this placement, please let me know.

More info on the Backpack Program can be found here:
http://sccbackpack.blogspot.com/

Hands On Learning

Placement: Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House

Dear incoming students, welcome to my blog!

Like yourselves, a year ago, I was browsing blogs just like this one in hopes of learning more about Trek. I had many uncertainties and questions. What should I expect from joining Trek? What sort of roles will I take on at my volunteering placement? Is it a good choice for my education? In the end, I took a leap of faith and joined Trek. Eight months since then, I am here to tell you that it has truly been a rewarding experience and I invite you to take that same leap of faith.

The months that I have spent as a volunteer at the Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House has been a colourful experience. The highlight of my time there is the variety of people I got to work with. As Frog Hollow is an organization that seeks to cultivate a healthy and diverse community, throughout my volunteering, I got to meet individuals of all different ages from different cultures and countries. In the end, it is these people who have made my Trek experience truly enjoyable. The staffs at Frog Hollow are all very warm and supportive. The thing that surprised me the most was how much trust they invested within me. My supervisor seemed genuinely interested in my opinions and even asked me to help her plan future volunteering activities on several occasions. The members of the program that I worked with are international students who come from various parts of Asia. It was nothing short of fascinating to observe at such close proximity how these different ethnicities and nationalities, with their different languages and cultural practices, intersect and interact with one another. This diversity in community has made Frog Hollow a rich learning and research environment for a sociology student.

A key aspect of Trek is that it offers a site in real life where you can apply your learning. Perhaps you already know that. However, as it is a rather abstract statement, I will provide my own understanding of it through my experiences. Instead of exploring the academic concepts one learned in class through online research and readings assigned in discussion sections, Trek students have the opportunity to observe these concepts take place in real life. As Trek students are expected to write reflections of their volunteering experiences and relate it back to their course material, the same time that I am an involved participant at Frog Hollow, I am also a bystander observing and identifying the sociological forces propelling the social and cultural dynamics within the organization. My supervisor helped to facilitate my efforts by providing me with a lot insight into the community that Frog Hollow works with. She informed me of the hardships facing the international students, the economic problems associated with funding neighbourhood programs and even their interaction with governmental institutions. I believe that these real life instances make learning more three dimensional and academic information more relatable to our daily lives.

Beyond being a help in my academic endeavours, Trek has helped to integrate me into the university life by providing a social platform and extracurricular opportunities. At Frog Hollow, the importance of community is emphasized above all else and I find the same principle valued in the overall Trek organization. Aside from going to your volunteering placements, Trek requires you to attend several workshops and dinners where you get to mingle with other Trek students and explore social issues. This expanded my social circle at UBC for I got to meet students from different majors and years. Trek also made it easier for me to navigate the expansive resources offered by UBC by helping me tap into the vast extracurricular and leadership opportunities offered on and off campus. With its team of student leaders and staffs who advocate for further student involvement within their communities, Trek has enriched my university experience by extending it beyond that of my academic life.

All in all, I encourage you to sign up for Trek! Use the opportunity to learn outside of the confines of classrooms and get to know the society that you are about to enter, instead of simply reading about it. I’m not saying that Trek will be the perfect experience. It certainly has its disadvantages. The greatest challenge that I have faced this year was the time investment it required for me to commute back and forth between campus and my placement. However, like every problem, there is a way to navigate it. I learned that as long as I managed my time wisely, the 2 hour transit every week was no problem. The community experience and the connections I gained from Trek are well worth the challenges that it presented. If you are a hands on learner, this is a leap of faith that I strongly recommend for you to take.

Trekking to Queen Alexandra Elementary

Hello! My name is Lauren and my Trek placement was as a teacher’s assistant in a 4/5 split class at Queen Alexandra Elementary. I found the experience to be incredibly rewarding and it supported my learning in a rather out-of-the-box way, which I appreciated.

Sometimes going to class, discussions, and activities can feel like a list of chores that just need to be completed, but Trek never felt like that. Even when the students were acting up or when everyone was stressed out, I felt like my support was important to the staff and students. I believe this was important for me when integrating into university because sometimes you put a lot of effort into an assignment and it feels as though your work goes unnoticed. Trek was an experience that constantly reminded me that there’s more in Vancouver than just UBC and I should be spending my time on more than just homework. The UBC campus is so large and diverse that one truly doesn’t have to leave, so having a reason to go somewhere in the community every week expands your awareness and understanding of what Vancouver is actually like. And, while working with children in school reminded me that I have no excuse not to do my work, Trek also reinforced that academics are not the be-all and end-all. This really helped my mental health when it came to getting a poor mark or when I was struggling on an assignment because I was reminded weekly that the world is much bigger than schoolwork and it’s not worth stressing over.

I found that the Trek program had little influence over my volunteer experience, however, taking sociology and discussing our Trek experiences through that lens was very helpful. For example, while volunteering I noticed how habitus — values, attitudes, and perceptions — acquired at home can influence a child’s abilities in school and the outside world, but after sociology I had a name for that concept. I understood how habitus was formed and what consequences come of it. I believe that volunteering in a school environment was an excellent way to see a majority of the concepts we discussed, such as the accomplishment of natural growth and the transfer of cultural capital, unfold. Therefore I would recommend working with children to be a great way to make clear connections between sociology and Trek.

Trek has many benefits and disadvantages, especially as a supplement to a sociology class. For example, by participating in Trek I was able to see the concepts we were learning about in action, however, it was up to me to make that connection. There were times where I found this very difficult and wished I was in the discussion group where they could just explain the confusing elements to me. I’ve also wondered if I had participated in that more explicit learning experience would my marks have improved, but ultimately I was glad I chose Trek because I prefer experiential learning to learning through research and essay writing.

I am very grateful that I got to learn by volunteering as I found it more engaging and exciting than most ordinary class structures. For this reason, I believe that many students could benefit from this style of learning. If given the opportunity, I would recommend giving experiential learning through volunteering a try.

Attic Thrift Store – Gordon Neighbourhood House

Dear future students (who are contemplating whether to join the Trek program),

My name is Anna Huynh and through the Trek program, I have been volunteering at Gordon Neighbourhood House (GNH) Attic Thrift Store for the past 4-5 months. Being a Trek student this past year, (I will try to not be biased) I hope through this blog I can convince you to take on the Trek program because let me tell you, it is so worth it!

Since 1942, GNH is situated in Vancouver’s West End. They work together with the community and sister organizations to offer programs that reflect the needs of the community ranging from community lunches to yoga to counselling. GNH helps connect everyone in the West End community together as well as provides basic necessities to those in need. As a volunteer at GNH Attic Thrift Store, I helped organise the store and talked to customers. Every day, the store relies on volunteers to come and help run the store. If there are not enough volunteers on a certain day, the store closes early.

When I first heard about the Trek program, I thought to myself I just got to university. It is a new country, a new city, everything was too “new” for me to take on volunteering. But then I thought maybe through this volunteering opportunity, I can get to know the city I’m living in better. Being a UBC student, with the campus size and everything it offers, sometimes students do not need to leave campus for much. I thought to myself I want to get to know Vancouver, not just go to classes and back home every day. Thus, after a while, I decided why not give it a shot? You would still be doing the same amount of work as a discussion student anyways but you will get to know and see the real problems taking place in different parts of the communities in Vancouver.

By volunteering at GNH Attic Thrift Store, I got to really witness current problems taking place in Vancouver such as poverty, social breakdown, drug addiction and how different small community groups are trying their best to help tackle these problems. For example, the West End community suffers from poverty. Many people cannot afford basic food and clothes. Thus, GNH Attic Thrift Store aims to sell donated clothing at a much cheaper, more affordable prices. My volunteering experience allows me to understand the issues better. Thus, when we discuss these issues in class, I have a much better understanding and contribute more to discussions. Additionally, through volunteering, I have met so many people all with their own individuals’ stories. Another benefit you will get from participating in the Trek program is when you are writing your Trek reflection, it will be so much easier to relate your experience to the course materials. When I wrote my reflections for Trek, I barely had to think you will be able to see the concepts/ideas studied in SOCI 100 being applied to real life.

So overall, I am going to assume if you are reading this blog then you are contemplating whether to join Trek and at the end of the day, I will say I think you should definitely give it a shot even though it might be a bit intimidating considering you just started universities. The experience will be much more rewarding than you think. Be brave! Go out there and help your community out!

Me with two other volunteers at the Gordon Neighbourhood House Attic Thrift Store

Best of luck,

Anna Huynh

 

P.S. If you are thinking of volunteering at Gordon Neighbourhood House or is placed there and have any questions, shoot me an email @anna.huynh1110@gmail.com!