Poland drive is the newest activity I have become engaged in. It revolves around gathering money through fundraisers and various other activities in order to aid a foster home in Poznan, Poland. The service group meets every Tuesday during the break and this is when we discuss our plans for the future, as well as the dates for the trips to the foster home in Poland.
Poland drive is an activity in which many skills are necessary in order to provide for the children. Some of the things I think I was good at doing during this activity was collaborating with the staff of both FIS and the foster home, as well as communicating with kids from the foster home due to my ability to speak the polish language. However, things I need to improve on is remembering to come to Tuesday meetings because sometimes I would just forget about them. So an aspect of the Poland drive I need to improve on is definitely my commitment/discipline.
This is the first time I have done something like this, meaning that it is my first time in my life that I have had the opportunity of interacting with kids from foster homes and understanding their problems from a personal level. Additionally, something I found quite difficult to do was translating from polish to English in real life time. This is because some sayings only exist in polish, therefore, some of the sentences I wouldn't be able to translate or I would have to translate indirectly. Not only this but I also found it extremely emotionally taxing to say goodbye to the children once we had developed an emotional bond between each other. However, I am sure that our work there was deeply appreciated due to the personal involvement we put into it.
Like I said before, my role in this activity was not only to talk to the children and aid at the foster home but also to translate from polish to English and vice versa. One way in which I prepared for the translation was talking in polish at home for my whole life, and taking polish lessons at home for the past year. My translations were meant to increase the FIS staffs ability to communicate with the foster home faculty, allowing us to ask for what they needed help in.
Poland drive is a service group based on collaboration with others this means that during the course of this activity I had to collaborate on many occasions with many different people. An occasion such as this would be during a meeting I had with the staff of FIS and the foster home's workers during which I had to collaborate with people from the foster home and FIS in order to translate everything they wished me to say. Not only this but many times I would collaborate with the kids from the foster home and the FIS students in order to sometimes allow easier communication between them. I found the working relationship between the staff of FIS and the foster home and me to be extremely good, due to their understanding of how difficult it is to translate in real life time. This means that it was much easier for me to translate in a nonpressure environment.
The most difficult part about committing to this activity was the time it took to go to the Poland drive. Although this was an extremely pleasant activity it did take place during my vacation, meaning I had to sacrifice my vacation time in order to go to it. However, due to how beneficial the service group was to the local foster home I believe that this time was worth sacrificing. There is nothing really difficult about the Poland drive due to how engaging of an activity it is, this is because I believe that there is nothing hard when one really enjoys doing something because he is having fun while doing it.
This activity engages in a very important global issue, specifically, the inability or lack of will of the parents to take care of their children resulting in them being placed in foster homes. This means that children are brought up in foster homes away from their parents, which can result in many mental instabilities. Additionally things like these do not only happen in Poland but all over the world, and I believe that if every school would do something like the Poland drive the situation in many of the care homes would be much better than what it is currently. However, the reason kids like these are ignored is because people from upper and middle-class societies fail to notice them, and this is yet another reason why Poland drive exists. Its purpose is to spread awareness around the local community that foster homes are still a big part of our society and that kids like these deserve better lives and better conditions to live in. Although the issue of foster homes does not impact me directly it does impact thousands of kids around of the world and therefore should be addressed and looked after.
To conclude, I believe this project is extremely beneficial to the foster home we have under our protection due to the fact that not only do we spread awareness around the local community in order to incentivise the aiding of such projects but we also go out there and help such homes with both financial and personal means, by either funding various buildings projects for the foster home or by going to the Poland drive and interacting with the kids directly, forming long-term bonds between them and making them feel wanted. If I were to improve one aspect of my performance in the Poland drive next year it would definitely be to remember to participate in all the Poland drive meetings on Tuesdays because this year I sometimes forgot about attending them.
Poland drive is an activity in which many skills are necessary in order to provide for the children. Some of the things I think I was good at doing during this activity was collaborating with the staff of both FIS and the foster home, as well as communicating with kids from the foster home due to my ability to speak the polish language. However, things I need to improve on is remembering to come to Tuesday meetings because sometimes I would just forget about them. So an aspect of the Poland drive I need to improve on is definitely my commitment/discipline.
This is the first time I have done something like this, meaning that it is my first time in my life that I have had the opportunity of interacting with kids from foster homes and understanding their problems from a personal level. Additionally, something I found quite difficult to do was translating from polish to English in real life time. This is because some sayings only exist in polish, therefore, some of the sentences I wouldn't be able to translate or I would have to translate indirectly. Not only this but I also found it extremely emotionally taxing to say goodbye to the children once we had developed an emotional bond between each other. However, I am sure that our work there was deeply appreciated due to the personal involvement we put into it.
Like I said before, my role in this activity was not only to talk to the children and aid at the foster home but also to translate from polish to English and vice versa. One way in which I prepared for the translation was talking in polish at home for my whole life, and taking polish lessons at home for the past year. My translations were meant to increase the FIS staffs ability to communicate with the foster home faculty, allowing us to ask for what they needed help in.
Poland drive is a service group based on collaboration with others this means that during the course of this activity I had to collaborate on many occasions with many different people. An occasion such as this would be during a meeting I had with the staff of FIS and the foster home's workers during which I had to collaborate with people from the foster home and FIS in order to translate everything they wished me to say. Not only this but many times I would collaborate with the kids from the foster home and the FIS students in order to sometimes allow easier communication between them. I found the working relationship between the staff of FIS and the foster home and me to be extremely good, due to their understanding of how difficult it is to translate in real life time. This means that it was much easier for me to translate in a nonpressure environment.
The most difficult part about committing to this activity was the time it took to go to the Poland drive. Although this was an extremely pleasant activity it did take place during my vacation, meaning I had to sacrifice my vacation time in order to go to it. However, due to how beneficial the service group was to the local foster home I believe that this time was worth sacrificing. There is nothing really difficult about the Poland drive due to how engaging of an activity it is, this is because I believe that there is nothing hard when one really enjoys doing something because he is having fun while doing it.
This activity engages in a very important global issue, specifically, the inability or lack of will of the parents to take care of their children resulting in them being placed in foster homes. This means that children are brought up in foster homes away from their parents, which can result in many mental instabilities. Additionally things like these do not only happen in Poland but all over the world, and I believe that if every school would do something like the Poland drive the situation in many of the care homes would be much better than what it is currently. However, the reason kids like these are ignored is because people from upper and middle-class societies fail to notice them, and this is yet another reason why Poland drive exists. Its purpose is to spread awareness around the local community that foster homes are still a big part of our society and that kids like these deserve better lives and better conditions to live in. Although the issue of foster homes does not impact me directly it does impact thousands of kids around of the world and therefore should be addressed and looked after.
To conclude, I believe this project is extremely beneficial to the foster home we have under our protection due to the fact that not only do we spread awareness around the local community in order to incentivise the aiding of such projects but we also go out there and help such homes with both financial and personal means, by either funding various buildings projects for the foster home or by going to the Poland drive and interacting with the kids directly, forming long-term bonds between them and making them feel wanted. If I were to improve one aspect of my performance in the Poland drive next year it would definitely be to remember to participate in all the Poland drive meetings on Tuesdays because this year I sometimes forgot about attending them.