Mama's Kitchen
At HTHI we have an externship program, where instead of being in school for a month we have to find an internship on our own. We work at our internship a minimum of 30 hours a week and have a mentor that is guiding us and teaching us how their work place functions. Here is some more information provided by the school.
What's this "Senior Year Externship" I keep hearing about?
Senior externship is an approximately 4-week internship or project experience during which students deeply explore a topic of interest. It is an important opportunity for students to explore their career interests, gain professional experience, build relationships with members of the community, and cultivate their skills and understanding in new areas. The purpose of the HTHI Externship experience is to invite our senior students to connect with an adult member of the community and develop skills and relationships that might help launch them towards their career of choice.
What students need to do to get credit for externship
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Work for the equivalent of four weeks, 30 hours a week between mid May and mid June.
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Complete an internship under the supervision of a professional mentor that aligns with your learning and career goals.
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Schedule one or more site visits with your externship teacher.
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Complete your blog assignments on time.
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Complete an Externship Presentation of Learning (EPOL).
Week 1: For my final externship/Internship I really wanted to do something with volunteer work. Last year for junior internships I tried to do something in the same field but I was too young. Now that I am finally 18, I can finally actually do volunteer work without a parent or guardian having to be dragged away from work. I was looking for an internship and emailing people for weeks, either no one got back to be or they already had an intern. So my friend Mikaela and I decided to partner up and email/call places together. Teamwork makes the dream work right? It was about two weeks until the deadline that we heard of Mama's kitchen and decided it wouldn't hurt to reach out and ask. THANKFULLY, they were able to take us on and meet all the mentor needs. We actually have a couple of mentors, but we'll get into that later. Mama's kitchens mission statement is "Mama's kitchen is a community driven organization, believes that everyone is entitled to the basic necessity of life - nutritious food. Out nutrition services improve the lives of women, men, and children vulnerable to hunger due to HIV, cancer, or other critical illnesses". They also have a vision statement, "At Mama's Kitchen, we envision a community where all individuals with critical illnesses are no longer vulnerable to hunger." There are a set number of requirements that you need to have in order to be qualified for this program. For example diabetics can be qualified if they have an A1C of 8 or higher, hospitalization in the past 6 months, a referral, and then their income is $1,500 or less a month. When starting here I was really nervous about having to meet all these new people and being in such a social environment, but everyone is really nice and I got over that pretty quickly. As I stated before I wanted to do more volunteer work last year and wasn't able to, so when I found out they would take me on this year I was really excited.So far I've really learned a lot here, teamwork is a big one. HTHI is known for being project based and where students work together to solve complex issue and concepts but the groups are pretty stereotypical, one person carrying the entire group. No one here doesn't pull their weight. There is a lot of assembly lines producing every meal, everybody has one job they just do over and over again such as placing chicken onto rice someone had already scooped in and doing that 380 more times till every client has a meal.
My mentor interview: https://youtu.be/cttwbpe214k
Week 2: There are constantly new skills to be learning here, ranging from how they file specific forms to how they organize all the food bags before delivery. So far we have done a little bit of everything and I'm not gonna lie, sometimes it's a lot of work organizing and reorganizing cases of food. Thankfully I have Mikaela here to make it more fun. Something that is definitely challenging is trying to adapt to the new systems that they are starting to make their delivery system more efficient. Like today (5/22), everyone here was learning a new organization system that made it so the first bags that needed to go out were set up and ready for the drivers when they got their. So the drivers didn't have to go find which bags they needed for the route and get checked off. Get them in and out of there as quickly as possible. Thankfully everyone here is really helpful and open to change, they are really inviting when it comes to volunteers and including them in their assembly lines. I say assembly lines because that's how they make their meals quickly once its made, one person is doing the same job over and over again. As shown here:
Week 3: Something that HTHI has done to prepare me for this internship was being able to follow through and create a project that was actually functional and helpful to this community. Everything here is pretty different then anything we've done at HTHI, but the project portion of this internship my partner and I knew how to do and do well. When our mentor first described our project I was thinking about where we would put it, he wanted something that would teach volunteers how to do the tedious tasks that we were taught how to do. So that in the future people could use this project instead of having to take time out of his work day and put him behind. So when we were given this project with my HTHI ways, I started looking at the walls. Trying to figure out where we could put a project like this. Then my mentor brings up a binder, and how he just wanted something simple that could be put at different work stations. So I started making a plan for when we were taking pictures and putting them in a template I made, then remade because I didn't like it. So the video prompt this week was supposed to be us posting what felt rewarding from our internship. Unfortunately I can not post that, I will do my best to explain it. After having to pack nearly 400 meals every other day and the packaging almost 400 bags of food about three times every other day, it's a little tedious. So watching the people receive these meals and take them so gratefully. Knowing we are actually helping these people have something as simple as the right to food is really rewarding.
At last I found something almost as rewarding that I can record. When we send out meals we are packing the same 300 bags about 5-6 times. So watching them go out it really satisfying.
This is what it looks like during staging and prepping the bags:
Week 4: Despite some ups and downs throughout this externship journey, I have learned a lot. I've learned how to act and be productive in a workplace environment, how to handle tedious tasks with a smile on my face, and more importantly, how to turn around people's view of me. I am thankful for Mark, my mentor, for giving me the chance to work with this amazing company and all the good it does for the surrounding communities. I am thankful for Gus because he was always there is I needed help and was always the sweetest person, and he kept me busy with bag checks and surveys. I am also very thankful for all the volunteers because they made each day much more fun. Getting to know so many amazing people who had served this organization for years was incredible. I loved interning for a non-profit because it brought out so many genuine people who were there because they wanted to be, it was hard to find someone who was intentionally rude. I think I would work for another non-profit one day, but my journey ahead is stilled swayed towards the medical field. Both fields help a crazy amount of people and I hope that one day I can leave an impact on someone just like Mama's Kitchen has left such an impact on everyone they serve.
My Video: https://www.wevideo.com/hub#
