April Li
November 1st, 2015 12-3 PM
Peninsula Humane Society
Morgan Little
650-340-7022 ext. 382
By my last visit, I had seen the kittens grow into slightly bigger kittens that were more active and capable of the more stereotypical cat behaviors. Even though I had seen essentially the same kittens every week for just over the past month, I felt more sad than I had expected when I realized that this was my last time seeing them. I had raised them (along with many other volunteers) and I was really attached to these small balls of fur that were just beginning their real lives. After diligently feeding, cleaning, and sometimes even rubbing their stomachs to stimulate their bowel movements (mostly for some of the younger kittens) for them, I wanted to adopt them all in order to make sure that their lives would be as happy as cat lives could possibly be. While I personally, was not necessarily instrumental in keeping them alive, because plenty of people want to help kittens, I feel like I did help with this group of kittens at least; it was still really nice knowing that all these tiny minor activities that I had done or helped with (and annoyances like getting kitten poop on myself that I had put up with) had contributed in some part to these cats leading healthy and happy future lives once they got adopted.
On the other hand, despite the adorableness of the kittens, the entire experience reinforced my desire to help out with animal overpopulation because I also realized that I had been helping out with abandoned cat babies for the last month, and that was a very sobering thought when I further considered the kittens that hadn't been brought to the Humane Society in time to receive care. While the Humane Society did and does its best to help all animals, the number of animals does impact the quality of the care that each one can experience; with less overpopulation, the Humane Society could devote more resources to less cases and possibly help animals more overall.
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Peninsula Humane Society Visit #3
April Li
October 10th, 2015 12-3 PM
Peninsula Humane Society
Morgan Little
650-340-7022 ext. 382
Before I had started working at the Peninsula Humane Society's Kitten Nursery, I think I skimmed over most of the job description, and instead had only seen the word "kitten." To be honest, I thought that I would spend my time playing with or "socializing" the kittens to human interaction and the six visits would pass quickly and easily. However, as I had learned by my third visit, this was definitely not the case. The Kitten Nursery was home to kittens, yes, but they were very young, most of them around three to five weeks old and required a fair amount care to make sure that they would grow up healthily. I was very shocked and a little sad when I realized that there was also an alarmingly large number of kittens that were in the Kitten Nursery.
However, it also reminded me why I wanted to work with animals in the first place for my PACT project. Overpopulation is an aspect of Animal Abuse, the social issue that I wanted to address, and because people had not spayed or neutered their animals (cats in this case), it resulted in an overabundance of kittens—something that I had not realized was possible before. As a result, not only do these kittens often grow up in poor condition, they would in turn become a part of the problem themselves, if/when they reached adulthood. The Kitten Nursery would keep them safe and healthy, help the cycle end by spaying and neutering them, and also ultimately help the kittens find a home.
October 10th, 2015 12-3 PM
Peninsula Humane Society
Morgan Little
650-340-7022 ext. 382
Before I had started working at the Peninsula Humane Society's Kitten Nursery, I think I skimmed over most of the job description, and instead had only seen the word "kitten." To be honest, I thought that I would spend my time playing with or "socializing" the kittens to human interaction and the six visits would pass quickly and easily. However, as I had learned by my third visit, this was definitely not the case. The Kitten Nursery was home to kittens, yes, but they were very young, most of them around three to five weeks old and required a fair amount care to make sure that they would grow up healthily. I was very shocked and a little sad when I realized that there was also an alarmingly large number of kittens that were in the Kitten Nursery.
However, it also reminded me why I wanted to work with animals in the first place for my PACT project. Overpopulation is an aspect of Animal Abuse, the social issue that I wanted to address, and because people had not spayed or neutered their animals (cats in this case), it resulted in an overabundance of kittens—something that I had not realized was possible before. As a result, not only do these kittens often grow up in poor condition, they would in turn become a part of the problem themselves, if/when they reached adulthood. The Kitten Nursery would keep them safe and healthy, help the cycle end by spaying and neutering them, and also ultimately help the kittens find a home.
Thursday, September 1, 2016
Visit #6 Blog
Cameron Kay
August 23, 2016 11am-2pm
Webster House
John Q. Dela Cruz
Today I think I conquered my fear of
the third floor. At Webster there are four floors. The first floor is reception
and employee headquarters, the second is short-term care (rehab and such), the
third is the memory care unit, and the fourth is general long-term care. I’ve
spent the past three visits on the third floor and I think I’m finally
comfortable with it.
The first few times I came to
Webster, I avoided the third floor like the plague. I’d drop my bag in the
volunteer office and immediately head up to the fourth floor to assist John in
whatever activities he had planned, but a few visits ago, John didn’t need help
and handed me over to Cynthia, one of the nurses on the third floor. She gave
me a pile that contained three books: one of dramatic love poetry, one about
God, and the other a self-help book about finding tranquility. We gathered a
group of residents and I began to read selections from each, but we immediately
ran into a problem: I was the only sound English speaker.
When someone who speaks English as a
second language experiences memory loss, what can happen is that they revert
back to their mother tongue. The woman to my left was trying to speak to me in
Hindi, while the woman to my right, who I later found out only spoke Chinese,
had fallen asleep in the first ten minutes. Two of the other women spoke
Spanish, making me bitterly regret my six years of Latin. I don’t mean to be
flippant; I can’t imagine what it is like for these people not to be able to
communicate with their caregivers or volunteers like me. One woman grabbed on
to me with wild and started speaking no language at all, making nonsensical
sounds, but clinging onto my arm and looking at me as if she was trying to tell
me the most important thing in the world. I found out from one of the nurses
that she had suffered a stroke and lost her ability to speak coherently.
I did a puzzle with another resident
(I can’t name residents because that violates their privacy). She always wore a
helmet and was one of the few who could speak. As we started to put together
the puzzle, she began to tell me about her accident, the reason she ended up in
Webster. She told me that she went to lunch with a friend in Town & Country
Village in Palo Alto and her friend basically tried to run her over with her
car. She got upset and started shouting that it was murder, but calmed down
after I turned her attention back to the puzzle. I don’t know if what she told
me is the truth, in fact I suspect it’s distorted, but what alarmed me was how
true it was to her.
The issue with losing one’s mental
faculties is that what you believe to be the absolute truth can be something entirely
wrong. I took this lovely Polish woman on many walks. She was a court room
translator for many years and often likes to tell me what it’s like to speak
many languages. She seems sharp as a tack, but then at the end of every visit
she asks me to take her home to an address on Sheridan Avenue. She tells me
that she doesn’t live at Webster and asks me to take her home, but I can’t. I
have to take her back upstairs.
The third floor breaks my heart.
People who were once professors, linguists, accountants, or any other
profession you can think of can’t tell you what year it is. However, it’s
opened my eyes to the gravity of diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia. They’re
hard on the patient, but they must be just as hard on their loved ones, and I’d
love to be able to help both.
Visit #3 Blog
Cameron Kay
July 2, 2016 10am-4pm
Webster House
John Q. Dela Cruz
I never expected working at Webster
to be sad. My dealings with the elderly before Webster had mostly been where
they marvel at my youth and then talk about their grandchildren. Or they’re my family members and simply ask me about my life. However, it’s a very different experience at Webster. Because it
was Friday, we had ice cream hour. I went around and served scoops of Cookies
‘n Cream and sugar-free Vanilla ice cream to the residents and nurses. Many of
the residents couldn’t have it because of dietary restrictions and the ones who
could struggled to hold the spoon without a nurse’s aid.
We played Bingo in the afternoon. I
know that’s the most stereotypical elderly thing to do, but we did. Another
volunteer was calling the numbers, so I sat at a table with two women. They
asked me about where I wanted to go to college and told me about their
families. It felt very comfortable to me, more comfortable than any other
interaction I’d had that day with a resident because it was familiar. They each
got three bingos apiece and told me that I was lucky for them. I was happy to
be doted on a bit, but was jerked out of my stupor when a nurse came over to
check their blood pressure and administer their medication.
It’s the dependence of the residents
on the care of the staff and the means of the facilities that bothers me.
They’ve gotten to a stage in their life where they can’t be independent like I
am. I took one resident out into the garden today because the nurses told me
that she likes to be in the sun, but I shouldn’t keep her out for more than forty
minutes. She didn’t speak a word of English, so we just sat together in the sun
for a while and she didn’t want to go back inside. They’re confined to the home
without any real privacy. They need someone to push their wheelchairs, feed
them, give them their medications, prepare their food, go to the bathroom, or
even just put down the little slots on their Bingo cards. I’m glad I can be one
of those people because I’m something new in a life that’s entirely made up of
routine.
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Jason Scharff 6th visit: Scholars4Scholars
Jason Scharff
August 23, 2016. 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Scholars4Scholars
Jose Bethancourt
While after my sixth visit (each of 3 hours), I unfortunately haven’t finished it fully (18 hours is not a lot of time to write a coding project), I’m going to finish it over the next few days and do a bit more than the six visits so they can launch it. However, from just playing around with what I have now, I’m amazed how readily available scholarship opportunities are that I had no idea exist. I strongly believe from working on this that a lot of work needs to be in the awareness sphere of how to pay for college. When I was first asked to do this, I though writing a scholarship search engine wouldn’t be doing a whole lot, but obviously I agreed. Now I’m honestly flabbergasted nothing like this existed. All other systems require so much initial energy to just see scholarship options. The biggest step before I can be confident this will help people is how the organization spreads the word about the search engine. However, because Scholars4Scholars has people on the ground in the Rio Grande Valley I’m confident it’ll have targeted impact. However, I strongly believe this can be expanded to more areas––all we need is people to market it.
In doing this I discovered that doing pro-bono development is a lot of fun and rewarding. Living in kind of a bubble, I often don’t think about how technology could be used to help people, but doing this work has convinced me that I could volunteer more and really help people just by using my brain and keyboard.
I’ll update this post once it goes live within the next few days on their website.
Jason Scharff 3rd visit at Scholars4Scholars
Jason Scharff
August 20, 2016. 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Scholars4Scholars
Jose Bethancourt
Before beginning my PACT project I wasn’t 100% sure what I would do for the organization. I had gotten involved because of a friend who lives in the area the organization specializes in (the Rio Grande Valley) and he had told me all of these stories about people he knew who had no idea about college or how to pay for it which opened my eyes to just how much of a bubble we live in. Obviously not living in the area, I at first wasn’t sure what I could do for them, but they agreed to take me. They knew I had development experience so they asked if I could write a search engine that they could show students and provide for free that helps students find scholarship opportunities in addition to just their own. I had never really thought about this so I spent the majority of my first two visits looking into the alternatives and writing code to take data from them to incorporate into their own product. From there, I got into the development which is a bit more dry. (though interesting as I haven’t done much web work before). I absolutely feel as if I’m having an impact because I never realized quite how bad the current scholarship search system is––the best systems require a huge commitment and large questionnaires covering the sheer amount of opportunity available scaring students away. While I’m not working directly with those affected, in a sense, my work is more rewarding because if I do my job correctly it could expand beyond just the Rio Grande Valley and make it much easier for students to figure out how to pay for college.
Visits 3-6 at MROSD
Ben Zdasiuk
08/16/2016
Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District
Paul Mckowan
email: volunteer@openspace.org
phone: (650) 691-1200
My visits with Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District during the summer have been less eventful than my visits in the winter-- simply less inclement weather results in less trail damage from fallen trees and water based erosion. That said, in my visits at El Corte De Madera, Purisima, Montebello, Russian Ridge, and Coal Creek Open Space Preserves (I hit Montebello, Russain Ridge, and Coal Creek all in one day, and ECdM and Purisima each on their own day) I did find a number of downed trees. Most of the trees that had fallen were looked like older trees, which may've been weakened by a few years of drought, and then fallen when the summer winds (caused by marine layer fog spilling over the Santa Cruz Mountains) hit them. Because these trees were on average older and larger, I ended up marking and cataloging the trees for rangers with chainsaws to clear. It was also good to monitor trail modifications that had been made the year before and see that those modifications were supporting wilderness traffic (horses, hikers, bikers) without sending erosion runoff into streams. This was encouraging to see as many of the streams in the area have been filled with silt and other erosion byproducts from logging and trail/road construction over the past 100 years, which has created ecological issues in affected streams. Overall, I found it rewarding to see that land management agencies are taking concrete steps to protect and armor the watersheds and Open Space agencies on the Peninsula.
08/16/2016
Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District
Paul Mckowan
email: volunteer@openspace.org
phone: (650) 691-1200
My visits with Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District during the summer have been less eventful than my visits in the winter-- simply less inclement weather results in less trail damage from fallen trees and water based erosion. That said, in my visits at El Corte De Madera, Purisima, Montebello, Russian Ridge, and Coal Creek Open Space Preserves (I hit Montebello, Russain Ridge, and Coal Creek all in one day, and ECdM and Purisima each on their own day) I did find a number of downed trees. Most of the trees that had fallen were looked like older trees, which may've been weakened by a few years of drought, and then fallen when the summer winds (caused by marine layer fog spilling over the Santa Cruz Mountains) hit them. Because these trees were on average older and larger, I ended up marking and cataloging the trees for rangers with chainsaws to clear. It was also good to monitor trail modifications that had been made the year before and see that those modifications were supporting wilderness traffic (horses, hikers, bikers) without sending erosion runoff into streams. This was encouraging to see as many of the streams in the area have been filled with silt and other erosion byproducts from logging and trail/road construction over the past 100 years, which has created ecological issues in affected streams. Overall, I found it rewarding to see that land management agencies are taking concrete steps to protect and armor the watersheds and Open Space agencies on the Peninsula.
First Three Visits with MROSD
Ben Zdasiuk
05/08/2016
Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District
Paul Mckowan
email: volunteer@openspace.org
phone: (650) 691-1200
05/08/2016
Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District
Paul Mckowan
email: volunteer@openspace.org
phone: (650) 691-1200
Over the past six month’s I’ve done a variety of volunteer projects for the Mid-Peninsula Regional Open Space District. My volunteer projects have generally fallen into two categories: trail monitoring and patrol duties, and trail or ecological restoration projects. My first visit with MROSD was an ecological restoration project in a property that was to be annexed to Montebello Open Space preserve. Prior to opening new trails on a property, MROSD attempts to restore the ecosystems on that property to an ecologically stable state. On the property that I was working on, overgrowth from invasive French Broom was outcompeting native plants, so my group was tasked to remove any invasive species we spotted on the hillside. Talking to other volunteers on the project, I found that most of them decided to volunteer to give back to the outdoor community, and had been doing so through volunteering for a very long time.
My next two visits with MROSD were trail patrol and surveying assignments after large storms. After large storms, erosion, downed trees, and general debris take their toll on the hundreds of miles of trails serviced by MROSD, and it’s largely up to volunteers to get the trails up and running again. After large storms, I went out with a few other volunteers and mountain bikers to go find downed trees and eroded pieces of trail. We would then move any debris off-trail, repack and rebuild eroded sections of trail, and mark and report any large trail obstacles for chainsaw teams to remove.
Sunday, August 21, 2016
Final visit to UCSF Mission Bay Hospital's Art for Recovery Program
Kaitlin Hao
August 4, 2016, 10:00 A.M.
Art for Recovery Program at UCSF Hospital at Mission Bay
Cindy Perlis
Since my last blog post, Art for Recovery has given us much more opportunities and direct responsibilities. Our organization seems to really trust us now that we have shown our dedication and hard work with the Heart Project and Firefly Project. Sophia and I are in charge of cataloguing patients art, and now participate in art workshops for outpatients, who are discharged cancer patients returning for subsequent treatments and emotional support. We finally got to experience the direct interaction that we initially thought was missing from our PACT. Initially, I thought that the workshop would be almost like a therapy session, where heavy subjects such as illness and mortality would be discussed, since these workshops could be considered as a form of emotional therapy. Instead, much of the workshop consisted of cheerful chatter about random subjects while everyone worked on lighthearted art activities. Many patients asked me to talk about myself instead of talking about themselves, which shocked me. I initially intended just to listen to whatever they had to say, in fear that I would say the wrong thing. They seemed to love hearing about silly teenage trends or what colleges I was applying to. Perhaps they thought it was refreshing having two silly teenagers sitting at a table that was otherwise filled with middle-aged women patients. Later, Cindy told us what illnesses our new friends were afflicted with, which ranged from ovarian cancer to brain tumors. Although saddened by the severity of their illnesses, I tried not to let this new knowledge change the way I interacted with the ladies. I’ve learned that one of the best ways to interact with patients is to be aware of my words and not overstep my boundaries, but talk to them and joke with them like they are regular people.
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