Wow. Today was by far the most amazing day I've had in a long time. I was literally blown away, brought to tears, and just amazed by how strong these kids are!
Challenge Day is a day where 100 kids are brought to the assembly room and there are enough adults to be facilitators to groups of 4 kids. During the day we did exercises that basically break down the barriers. We danced, we did lots of hugging, played games to cheer each other on, and did some really in depth work which brought lots of tears, we went through lots of tissues for sure. There was one exercise called "Cross the line" where everyone stands on one side of a line and the person leading reads out things like "cross the line if you or anyone you know has had an addiction to drugs, alcohol, eating disorder etc.." and you cross the line if you or someone you know has had that. Thats the one that got me and I totally broke down, but there were lots of hugs to support me which was awesome. Then she went through all kinds of ones like "cross the line if you or someone you know has been in a gang" or "been arrested" or "been abused" etc..... everyone was crying by the end basically. It was so moving to see how much these kids have been through already at only 16 or 17!!
We broke into groups as well and went around the circle finishing the sentence "if you knew me then you'd know that...." the kids in my group were apprehensive at first but I helped them along and finally they opened up. It was truly incredible.
All in all, today really solidified my desire to further my psychology part of my degree in addition to my nutrition certification. I LOVED working with these kids!
At the end of the day we did this one on one thing where we sat facing another person and said what we are great at. I ended up going first, then when we were done the other person had to get up and "celebrate" by dancing, cheering and hollering the other person. The girl I was with was clearly the teenager shy and kinda shuffled around me, so when it was my turn to celebrate her I jumped up was dancing around her, screaming out, stood up on my chair and was pointing at her haha it was awesome and it was something that I could tell she'd never had happen to her before, which made me feel even better that I could do that for her.
At the very end of the day I was totally blown away, because quite a few of the kids got up at the front of the room and apologized to either specific people or the whole room for bullying or making fun of someone, then that person got brought up and they had a moment of apologizing to each other, then hugged it out and sat down. Other people got up and said that they really wanted to make a change and start including people that they ignored because they were scared to go sit with the "weird" kid that sat alone. Absolutely blown away I tell you!
Sooooo today was an incredible day!!
Here is the website for what we did today http://www.challengeday.org/
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