The End is Near!!!!

Hey fellow summiteers!!!

This semester has been one of great success for The Beacon Project.  We have had many fun experiences, and accomplished a lot. We began the semester with planning for the Fall Festival. After a couple of date changes, this ended up taking place on November 6th. Many families from the center attended.  The children seemed to enjoy the crafts and activities a lot. It was a great success in bringing these families closer together. The next project for this semester, is the Symphony Christmas concert. This will take place on December 11th. We organized tickets for the Lighthouse families that wanted to attend, and have put together goodie bags to hand out at the event. There will be an ice cream social to follow, which we hope will continue to build on the relationship between the Lighthouse families.

The best experience this semester was the success of the fall festival. It was wonderful to see the children having so much fun. I am glad we got to bring them to the Drury Campus, so that the children and the parents could be exposed to the hope of further education. The biggest challenge we faced was one of communication and responsibility. It was often quite hard to get a hold of Lighthouse. We were able to work around this issue, but it was a challenge in the beginning. In respects to responsibility, Lighthouse set unfair expectations of us. We paid for the entire Fall Festival, and did the majority of the planning. We were expecting much more assistance that what we received from Lighthouse.

The biggest issue shaping our plans for next semester is our budget. Becuase of the fact that we had to pay for the Fall Festival, much of our budget is depleted. We are going to have to plan very efficiently for our projects next year. We are also planning to start our volunteering a lot earlier in the semester.

I think this semester has taught me even better time management skills. We have had a lot of planning and preparation to do, which has made me use all of my time extremely efficiently. I have also enjoyed working with the children. I hope that this will help me in my future as a teacher.

The Stress Free Now program was an interesting experience. On the one hand I was able to experiment with things I would have never tried on my own. This gave me additional understanding of an area had no previous experience with. I did not, however, enjoy it. I do not feel as though this program benefitted me in any noticeable way. I feel as though, while different and providing a new experience, it was not something I would want to do again.

As the semester is coming to an end, I am excited about going home more than anything else. I have not seen my family since the beginning of the semester, which has been a huge challenge for me. Over winter break I will be relishing in home cooked food, my own bed, and being surrounded by my family.

Tiffany