Goal: Lead my Honor's Program students to raise $4000 in 8 weeks to pack meals for the hungry

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Even if we didn't raise $4000, every 1 dollar collected would ultimately fund 5 meals. After that realization, all we could think was, "Wow, we can't lose. We have to do this."

 

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Completed: December 4th, 2014

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• Why was this a goal? A service-learning project of this magnitude was unheard of within the Honor's Program. It would be memorable and inspiring to my students to accomplish and would positively impact others on a global scale.

• What was the biggest obstacle? Intimidation, absolutely. $4000, 13 students, 2 co-leaders, 8 weeks. The numbers weren't in our favor. Some of my students simply didn't think it was feasible. That was hard.

• What was the biggest motivation?   Even if we didn't raise $4000 to host the organization on campus for a meal-packing event, every dollar collected would still make an impact. That was enough empowerment to just get started and try our best.

 

How It Happened:

     My freshmen year at Iowa State (ISU), I participated in a course through the Freshmen Honor's Program. It was essentially, "How To Be A Good Student, Community Member, and Global Citizen 101." I loved the course, so my sophomore year I co-taught a section. Together, my co-leader and I created bi-weekly lesson plans that helped our section of 13 students accomplish various requirements of the course curriculum. One component of the course was for each section to complete a service learning project. Typical projects were bake sales that yielded ~$200 for a local charity , roadside pickups, caned-good drives for the campus food pantry.

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     Our students expressed that they wanted to do something to help feed the hungry. I had packed meals with Meals from the Heartland before and had fond memories of the event; you work as a team to weigh out various dehydrated goods to package up in meal sized portions. Meals are sent across the US and globally to help eliminate malnutrition and starvation. It felt like a great organization for us to funnel our efforts towards. What I didn't expect is that it would take $4000 in order to get them to bring the meals to campus so that my students (as well as other university students and faculty) could participate in the packing event.

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For some reason, it didn't scare me off. But boy, some of my students sure thought I had lost my mind when I told them I thought we could do it.

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     And I understood why. There were 15 of us and we didn't have a lot of time. So how did I get them on board? Well, if we didn't raise enough money for MftH to hold the packing event on our campus, we could still donate the money that we did raise. Each dollar funded 5 meals. After that realization, all we could think was, "Wow, we can't lose. We have to do this." No matter what, we would make a difference. That was enough to motivate them, but honestly it's not what drove me.

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     I didn't want to just raise $150 and call that good enough. The purpose of the service-learning project was to teach the selfless values of volunteering. But a project of this magnitude would teach so much more.

• They had to learn to delegate. My students collaborated with others Honor's sections, encouraging them to make our service learning project their own.

• They practiced public speaking. Through communicating with members of the community, we raised a majority of our funds. My shyest student said to me afterwards, "Lauren, I was so nervous, I didn't think I would be able to do it." Yet she had, and she was so proud.

• They took ownership. Being that the magnitude of our goal was so large, our cause was something they were invested in. They wanted to succeed.

• They would have sustaining effects. I knew that hand packing the meals as a team would be much more emotionally impactful than just sending off the funds in the mail. At the end of the packing event, 20,304 meals later, my students as well as other students and faculty said,

"That was so rewarding. I can't wait to do that again."