Anjali Phadke's Portfolio
Experience-STEMmersion
STEMmersion Overview
At the Dayton Regional STEM School (DRSS), STEMmersion is a time where a student can take a class of their choice. For two to three weeks, each student participates and at the end, there is a night where they can exhibit what they accomplished. The STEMmersion that I chose for this year is one called “DRSS Serves Dayton.” This STEMmersion is one of community service, where I had a chance to volunteer at six locations. We volunteered at House of Bread, Partners for Community Living, Rebuilding Together Dayton, Catholic Social Services, The Foodbank, and K12 Tejas Gallery. Along with volunteering off site (the site being DRSS), I was also able to complete a project for Goodwill/Easter Seals. Finally, I was able to listen to a multitude of guest speakers from multiple organizations and hear what their organizations were about. Overall, this was an amazing STEMmersion to take!
House of Bread
This organization, prepares and serves free lunch to anyone in need. They also prepare and donate food to other organizations who need it. At the downtown Dayton establishment, I had the honor of washing a variety of fruit, preparing bowls of fruit salad, serving dessert, and serving milk or water. I enjoyed this experience for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, the organization showed me how many people were really in need. The day that I volunteered, there were only around 100-150 people. But on a normal “busy” day, there are over 200 people that the organization serves. Secondly, I was really happy to see that the people there didn’t feel embarrassed or sad. Situations happen to everyone and it’s amazing to see that they take help if they need it. Thirdly, there are so many people that volunteer and donate food/money to this organization. They have a whole fridge packed with produce! Overall, I loved this experience and I would definitely go again to prepare and serve food.
Rebuilding Together Dayton
This organization, works to remodel seniors or people’s homes who can’t work on them themselves. From their website, “Rebuilding Together Dayton is the leading organization in the Miami Valley dedicated to rehabbing owner-occupied homes for low-income homeowners at no cost.” Along with Rebuilding Together Dayton Days where there are tons of homes being worked on by hundreds of volunteers, there are also individual homes that are worked on by a case to case basis. While we were at the Dayton home, there was a lot of work that had to be done. The whole outside of the house had to be primed and painted, and there was a whole fence infested with weeds. When I was there, I first spent around two-three hours cutting all of the weeds out with a hedge clipper. I also helped paint the exterior of the house a nice grey color! This experience really impacted me because we could see our work after we were finished, the house and the fence looked amazing after we were done with it! This organization is really amazing and I would definitely try and volunteer for the organization again!
Partners for Community Living
This organization works to help open doors and create opportunities for people with developmental disabilities. They also partner with Resident Home Association and Choices in Community Living Inc. to help the people with finding homes and making their lives as meaningful as possible. On the day that we went to their establishment in Dayton, seniors with developmental disabilities spent the whole time having fun! There were multiple activities in which they could participate in, anything from coloring to talking to other people! When I was there, along with talking to all of the wonderful people, I got to help landscape outside! There was a lot of trash and leaves that needed to be picked up, but we got it done. This was really impactful for me because I was able to see these wonderful people having real lives like everyone else. They were all so happy and loving and the whole experience really amazed me. Working with those people really made me want to go back and volunteer again!