I absolutely loved volunteering for the YMCA as part of Into the Streets! I thought that we’d be indoors, but we were in the woods! Thankfully the weather was great. My team’s job was to transfer firewood from one part of the woods to the main area. The wood was heavy, but it was so worth it! The forest is so beautiful in autumn. It was like taking a pleasant hike, only we did it like six times carrying blocks of wood every other time. It was also great bonding!

Into the streets was very hyped up and I was really excited to be a part of it. There was a lot of dedication from people all over more than I even expected. The shows ahead of our shift brought people all together with presentations and lots of hype, until the moment when we all separated. It was all a great way to get together with people in our community not only within our campus and beyond in the greater Ithaca area. The shirts were also a very nice touch to it all.

This last weekend we participated in Into The Streets with GRF Magdala. The event started out with a fun series of performances. The dance group Breakfree and a drumming group whose name I can’t remember performed very well. After a speech from Ryan Lombardi, we all went our separate ways to our assignments. Ours was at the YMCA, which I assumed would be cleaning a basketball court or another indoor task. It turned out that we were volunteering in the outdoor center, which meant that it was very hands on.

Our first task involved waterproofing a vine hut. When we were first assigned the task, I thought it would be impossible. We had to thread vines through a framework to fill in the many holes, which required a lot of teamwork. Eventually we ran out of vines, so we learned all about how to find vines in the forest and pull them down. At one point, two other girls and I tried using all of our body weight to pull a vine down from a tree, but we all ended up in the mud instead. At the end of it all though, the vine hut looked so much better. The cost was that I looked so, so much worse. We were all covered in various plant matter and scratches from the work, but hopefully we’ve created something lots of kids can enjoy for years to come.

I think that is something that really motivated me to keep working on the vine hut even when it seemed to be pointless and not going anywhere. I knew that this was something that I would have loved as a kid, and now it was my turn to give back and make something for the next generation of kids to enjoy. The cost of our time and cleanliness is definitely worth it to make something kids can create memories in.

Last Saturday, I participated in Into the Streets for a second year with Rose House.  Our team was assigned to the Tompkins County YMCA, which is located near the Ithaca Mall north of campus.  When we got in the taxi, though, I was confused to find that we were headed west, off campus, through downtown, and up into the hills…  I briefly considered that we may be being kidnapped, but soon we came to a trailhead way up in the hills.  It turns out that the YMCA has a massive outdoor education facility!  There’s an area with picnic tables and camping space in the front, and then acres of woods and trails beyond that.  Our YMCA representative explained that they teach classes year-round on everything from snowshoeing to orienteering to machete throwing, and run popular summer camps for kids.

First, some of the Rose students were tasked with adding to and filling in holes in a small shelter made of woven grapevines.  My group was assigned to carry branches from piles near the entrance to back by the stack of firewood.  Once those were moved, we were reassigned to pulling down said grapevines.  I found this slightly humorous, because that’s pretty much same thing we did on Westhaven Farm last year – pulling down tomato vines.

Unfortunately, tomato vines and grape vines are not at all the same thing.  It turns out that the wilderness is much more difficult to grapple with than an artificially cultivated greenhouse.  Grapevines are much, much tougher than tomato vines, and at least four times as thick and tall.  They are rooted firmly in the ground, and then wind up around tree trunks and into the branches.  They are remarkably flexible, which means that they’re good for weaving into a shelter, but nearly impossible to break.

They don’t just come down when you yank on them.  We tried pulling with four people at a time, and got nothing.  We tried to snap the vines by bending them and stepping on them together.  I tried digging the roots out of the ground, but they went too deep to manage without a shovel.  I tried putting my full body weight on these things and swinging around like George of the Jungle.  No dice.  The only solution was to move on and try to pick on a vine your own size.  In 2 hours, I conquered approximately 7 vines total.  I do understand why the YMCA couldn’t just hand out machetes like Halloween candy to 60+ college students, but I would have been eternally grateful for some kind of cutting utensil.

Unlike last year, I can’t say I quite understood how what we were doing was helping, at first.  I carried branches and logs from one pile…to another pile a few meters away.  Then I tramped around braving ticks and poison ivy in order to generally fail to gather grapevines.  I know that the YMCA is an amazing resource for the people, and especially kids, of Tompkins county…but why do they need a little hut?  Why does it need to be made out of specifically grapevines, which are nigh on impossible to gather?  Other groups were organizing equipment, picking up trash, extending trails…and I was just wandering around, losing fights with plants over and over.  My role was maximum effort, minimum efficiency, and didn’t really seem useful.  I had really been looking forward to this volunteer opportunity, and I couldn’t help but be disappointed that I didn’t seem to be personally helping the community in a tangible manner.

I didn’t really see how my volunteering was helping at all, until the end of the day, when a huge group of the volunteers spent the last 45 minutes working together to clear sticks and rocks out of a clearing in the woods.  The YMCA representative explained that he had a vision of all the kids being able to play things like soccer and flag football, but the entire property had been covered in trees.  So, he’d chosen a massive area of forest (I would estimate 50 feet in diameter), and then personally cut down all the trees and removed the stumps.  You know, as one does.  Our job was just to start clearing the ground so grass could grow there in the spring.  I heard a fair amount of grumbling about, “How are we supposed to clear all the sticks?!  The entire ground is sticks!”  But with the instructor’s vision in mind, I could understand why this was important for us to do.  With ~30 people participating, by the end I could actually see progress being made towards that goal.

The major purposes of the outdoor facility are to teach people to be more comfortable with nature and provide fun and unique outdoors experiences.  Part of that is not just having equipment and teachers, it’s having existing areas where people (and especially children) can do fun activities while in the woods.  Part of it is having trails to hike on and fields for soccer.  While it might not seem like as big a deal, I suppose part of making kids feel welcome in the wilderness is having little shelters them to hang out and roast marshmallows in in the winter.  If our host can spend weeks cutting down trees to clear a meadow single-handedly, I think I should be able to come to terms with tugging down some vines and moving sticks and branches.   If a task is necessary to your ultimate vision, it’s important to do it even if it seems useless or futile or terribly slow.

With regard to Into the Streets as a program, I was super happy to see so many Rose House volunteers this year!  There were only two of us last year, plus the GRFs, so I was proud to be part of a much larger Rose group this year.  ITS 2017 was well organized, the communication was effective, and I’m glad to have participated.  The Rose House team is apparently in the process of becoming master plant-fighters – we’ve now done tomato vines on a farm and grapevines in the woods.  ITS 2018 is going to have to find some magic beanstalks for us next year.

Last week, I had the opportunity to volunteer at Into the Streets.  This was an interesting experience for me because I never knew that Cornell had a day of service emphasized on giving back to the community. I also had never realized how far the Ithaca community spanned. I volunteered at the Y, and the task of my group was to rearrange the tree logs, stones, and rocks to make a nice playground setting for younger students who come to the outdoor Y for Summer Camp. This was an interesting experience since not only where we doing community service, but we also got to apply our creative skills in thinking about how we could arrange an interesting setup with the tools that we had to engage students. I appreciated that we got to collaborate with each other, brainstorm ideas, list pros and cons of what activities younger students were more likely to partake in etc, instead of just doing work that wasn’t mentally stimulating. I also got to meet diverse people from various grades and majors which was exciting because I feel like I only usually talk to students in my majors as they are taking the same classes as I am. In understanding the reasons people were choosing difference majors and minors, this got me thinking about the different minors that I could potentially do especially since I am enrolling for classes tomorrow.

Before we went to Into the Streets, there were performers who were showcasing their talent at Kennedy Hall. These performers were playing various drums and were very skilled and talented. I appreciated that we got to see the performers because that put everybody in an uplifted mood ready to get out and do service which I believe was the goal of the performers. Through this opportunity, I also realized the many opportunities there exists to volunteer in the community at Ithaca which I had never known before.  Sometimes because there are so many community service organizations at Cornell, it can be hard to see the simple ways that people can volunteer in the community. This one day of service was helpful in allowing me to understand very easily the types places I could do community service at Ithaca later on. Through this experience, I am looking forward to volunteering my time at similar outdoor settings like the Y in the near future.

This past weekend I participated in Into the Streets, a day of volunteering around Tompkins County. My group was assigned to the YMCA outdoor education centre. There were a variety of projects for us to do and my group began to work on completing a small hut made out of grape vines while other groups did organization, collected firewood and performed other similar tasks. Our goal was to make the hut more watertight by weaving in new vines. We worked together for most of the afternoon until we used up the pile of vines we had been given to use. After we ran out of vines, some of us went into the woods and after being shown how, began to collect more vines. The vines grew upwards, high into the trees and needed to be pulled down. It was hard work and required teamwork from the other volunteers to get the vines. In between, I got to swing on the vines which was a lot of fun. We then as the entire group of volunteers went out to help clear a field that will eventually be for playing in for the campers who come in the summer.

Overall the experience was quite fun (despite requiring a reasonable amount of physical effort) and a good teamwork exercise. It was very cool to see how much we accomplished in four hours and that we helped improve a resource for the community.

On October 28^th, I participated in “Into the Streets” with the organization Alpha Phi Omega, so I couldn’t volunteer with the Rose House team. Regardless, I was happy to have been able to participate in this amazing, eventful day. My team volunteered with the Ithaca Childcare Community Center, and instead of working with the children, we actually scrubbed down and cleaned the whole place top to bottom. The owner explained how during the week she often does not have time to clean it during the week as thoroughly as she would want to since it is so busy. It was amazing being able to see how happy it made her. She was truly grateful, and it is this type of work for why I joined Alpha Phi Omega – for the amazing community service opportunities and seeing an immediate difference made.

I am not a fan of the outdoors, let alone campgrounds. I think these areas are smelly, bug written, and overall not a fun and enjoyable time. With, this said, I was not the happiest of campers when I found out my group would be volunteering outside.

Prior to into the streets, all my volunteering was inside and often academic related. Into the streets provided me with the opportunity to support Tompkins county — and in particularly — the camp grounds of the local YMCA. I was able to clear sticks and rocks to make a soccer field and build a hut for the campers to lay down in. As I was helping achieve these goals for the camps, the occasional scratch from sticks would temporally demotivate me to continue. During these times, I thought about why I am not a fan of the outdoors. However, the constant support from the Rose House team gave me the push to continue. They reminded me of why we are here and the impact we are making. Being able to know that I helped provide a better experience for future campers of the YMCA is a great feeling. Volunteering at the YMCA has resulted in an innate sense of comfort being outside. I look forward to volunteering again!

On Saturday, I volunteered in the Ithaca area for the first time ever and it was quite an experience.  I honestly didn’t know what to expect going into Into the Streets however, the last thing I did expect was the forest.  When I found out we were volunteering at the YMCA, I had assumed that meant the one by Target and we were going to spend the afternoon organizing things or cleaning the gym.  no.

As I have mentioned previously, I have a severe phobia of bees.  So, when the taxis arrived in a wooded area with no sign of an indoors facility in sight I was not happy.  However, after we were assigned to our jobs (my team had vine-hut weaving) and began working, I really wasn’t too concerned with bugs.  The challenge was kind of weird and I definitely took more breaks than I should have but overall, it was actually fun.  I never stay outdoors in woody areas for long periods of time but the forest air and interesting task was refreshing.  We struggled at first and time was moving extremely slowly but at the end, we were all very proud of our vine hut.

The flora team volunteered as part of the into the streets program. I’ll admit, at first, I thought the program to be unfulfilling– cleaning the woods?? After picking up trash, roping down grape vine, and helping move logs around I realized this was not the instant moral gratification I wanted, but a subtle part of promoting nature. The gift of an idealic nature I received when I was young that made me who I am today: a human being in touch with the natural world. With an increasing indoor society, especially for the younger generations, I think by doing this I helped made the understated inspiration of nature more possible, visible for some kid, and that’s all that matters.

My experience with Into the Streets was surprising, to say the least.

To begin with, I wasn’t entirely sure what the event consisted of when I planned on signing up. I found out that it had to do with volunteering in the community once I was in the process of signing up and trying to complete the paperwork to take part in the event. Some of my friends had also signed up to do the event, so I thought that we might be in the same place to volunteer. In the end, the group I went to was assigned to the YMCA outdoor site, and I was placed in a group of entirely new people.

Having just been told that I would be volunteering at the YMCA, I thought that we would be at a building, possibly clearing up the front of leaves. The farther the bus went, the more we realized that our destination was not what we had expected. Despite the unexpected nature of the event, my group as a whole had a good experience.

We were tasked with cleaning up the “playground”. When we first saw it, we didn’t know that it was the playground that they had been talking about on our walk to the clearing. There were just a few short tree trunks and long branches scattered around. The one that was assigning the tasks to each groups told us that he wanted the playground to look like a sun, which was the extent of the guidelines we received.

As a group, we were able to decide what we wanted to do to accomplish the end that had been established for us. With this goal in mind, we were able to organize the stumps and branches into something that we thought kids would want to play with. We also added our own ideas to the organization of the playground.

While we went through making the playground, I was able to talk to my group members, which was composed of freshman through juniors and even a grad students. We were able to talk about different aspects of living and studying at Cornell, which was a good way for us to feel more comfortable with each other while we went through the process. In the end, we were all very happy with the results, especially since we were able to make something out of what used to look more disorganized. Since we were able to see concrete result, we could see what we were doing to help the community.

The experience was very rewarding. It was great being able to volunteer outside while the weather was still nice and being surrounded by the woods. Not only was I able to see the end results of my time there, I met new people through my group. It was great working with people that were aiming for the same goal, as well as being people that were easy to get along with. I think that I would enjoy being able to be a part of it again in the upcoming years, and look forward to what else I might be able to do.

To be honest, volunteering with Into the Streets was something I was not immediately looking forward to. However, after finally bracing the walk up the slope and meeting my wonderful team, I could already tell that the rest of the day would be an experience to remember.

I wanted to focus this conversation to the aspect of volunteering as a whole. This experience helped me stay in touch with the Ithaca Community and reminded me of the gratification that volunteering can give. You can make friends and learn about the community, and more  importantly, you can help change someones life for the better. From now on, I will always be sure to volunteer  in my free time, and enjoy doing it!

This is the second year I have participated in Into the Streets and I loved it. I love volunteering and often go to Loaves and Fishes on Thursdays to help in the soup kitchen. But this was totally out of my element. I am from Queens, New York and although Cornell is surrounded by beautiful gorges and trees our activity was focused on the outdoors. I thought I wasn’t going to enjoy it but as I looked at my peers next to me cleaning the green areas kids play in was truly rewarding. I had a chance to learn about the YMCA’s efforts in trying to get kids to enjoy the outdoors and the benefits of playing outside. Although it felt good helping Ithaca’s community, It also felt wonderful learning something new. I think I will try hiking and going for runs in the outdoors now!

I’ve always enjoyed volunteering and giving back to those less fortunate than I am. Into the Streets seemed like the perfect way for me to do that here in Ithaca. Going into the event, I had no idea what to expect. I figured we would end up playing with kids at the YMCA facility. To my surprise, we arrived at what looked like a hiking site or campground of sorts. It was so interesting to learn about all the different outdoor education programs they provide to the Ithaca community! Spending the day in the woods helping to clean up broken glass so kids don’t fall and get hurt was a lot more rewarding that it might sound. This event has inspired me to want to volunteer and give back more. I think I might try and volunteer at the YMCA regularly!

While the highlight of today’s event was the actual service we as a Rose House team performed, I want to mention the words of Vice President for Student and Campus Life Ryan Lombardi at the kickoff event for Into the Streets this morning. VP Lombardi shared an anecdote of his own time in college — a Halloween arts & crafts community service event for young, underprivileged children from the surrounding area. He stressed that this event was the turning point for his own views of community service and his career as a whole (he had originally gone to school to become a musician!), and he told us that while he didn’t expect us all to experience the same life-changing effects as he did, he hoped our opportunity to serve today would help us appreciate the community around us as well as our own privilege.

VP Lombardi’s words stuck with me throughout the day, reminding me to stay positive even when the work became challenging or monotonous. His anecdote also reminded me of my own experience interacting with homeless people at a shelter for which I was helping to organize a clothing drive. In either case, privilege is a dangerous blessing — today reminded me that it is incredibly important to keep in touch with my position in the world in order to ensure that I return positive contributions to it in return for the privilege I receive.