Our Donors:
At our utmost gratitude, Voiceopedia strives of the generous donors who help us fund all of our community projects. We would like to thank them dearly for their kindness and constant support. This year we have accumulated over $9000 worth of donations, which will continue to fund our projects in 2023. Again, we are extremely appreciative of our donors, as without them nothing would be possible.
Over the past year, our donations from our monthly fundraisers allowed us to partner with local organizations such as the International Rescue Committee (refugee center) and Life Moves (homeless shelter), providing the resources they needed.
Voiceopedia members plan to conduct more projects with the International Rescue Committee, where we will kickstart a literacy program focused on the facets of writing and reading. It is integral that a language barrier does not prevent youth from expressing their opinions and participating in their community. We are grateful to have received these funds and will continue to use them to empower youth refugees in our community. Thank you & Happy New Year!
At Voiceopedia, we believe writing is an amazing way of expressing our opinions on current political issues. Our goal is to encourage students to voice their concerns and knowledge of politics through the art of writing and speaking. Writing and speaking allows for expression of their opinions/perspectives on important issues going on in our community as well as topics they may be curious about. To fulfill our goal, over the course of the winter break, Voiceopedia partnered up with the San Jose Public Library to conduct a 7 week course writing camp! This camp took lots of preparation as our members had to create over several hours worth of curriculum.
Our main objective was to help our students improve their writing skills through vocabulary, literary devices, story structure, and many more. Throughout the camp we taught them various concepts that they used to write a short story for the San Jose Library Winter Storytelling Competition.
We started to advertise through the library websites and social media devices such as whatsapp, messages, and instagram. This created lots of traction as during these pandemics, students were eager to learn more and persevered to get better at writing. We gathered more than 30 plus students throughout the whole course of the camp.
During our lessons, we would always start off with a fun icebreaker to spark creativity in breakout rooms and an agenda for our one hour together on zoom. It was a hit as many students were more comfortable with participating and engaging themselves with other students. We had many fun activities and lessons throughout our meetings built towards improving their literary skills like difficult vocabulary, ethos, pathos, logos, grammar activities, and many more.
At the end of the camp, many students gave us feedback! Although this was our first time doing a camp online through the library, we can't wait to do more!
For more details about our camp please visit this website:
https://sjpl.bibliocommons.com/events/5fc59d335e8c0f2400fc4681
Please check out the many more camps provided by the library at this link:
Life Moves
Over this January, Voiceopedia launched a bake sale at Evergreen Square in order to fundraise money for a homeless shelter. The team sold a variety of baked goods for a price of $1 each including chocolate brownies, sugar cookies, and red velvet cupcakes.
It was a great experience for many of our members and I can vouch to the feeling of success. We sold out all our goodies as many customers supported our cause! Some people even donated extra money. We were thankful and some were gracious enough to ask how we were doing.
I particularly remember one family who was out on a run with their beautiful dogs and didn't want to purchase any items but donated money. I remember thanking them :)
The event was such a great success. It was a great way to interact with the community and see the smiles on everyone's faces after eating the baked items. Not only was it nice seeing their smiles but the smiles of the shelter we donated goods to. The money we raised from the bake sale went into buying six blankets, a box of pads, a jacket, toothbrushes and toothpaste, and some cozy socks. It felt great to use our hard earned money and donate it to Life Moves, an amazing homeless shelter.
Overall we would like to thank everyone who came and thank everyone who was able to make this event successful. It truly means a lot and hopefully we can continue to do so.
- Kashvi Jain, her take on the bake sale
Volunteering at the Supportive Family Housing Center made me truly realize the value of a home. Homes are not just a shelter, a shed to cover the rain, a place to spread and watch tv, its a place where you grow up and spend your life's memories with your family and friends.
At the Supportive Family Housing Center I saw kids who weren’t able to call a place home. These kids moved from shelter to shelter, struggling to find a home. Many of them whom have broken families never get to experience the love of two parents. Many of them have to work on their own merits to stay strong and grow up and become the person who they want. They don't have the privileges set out that we all do.
Voiceopedia hosted a mental health workshop at this center to help the many kids learn to take care of their body, health, food, and fun. We started off by drawing and painting images that came to our mind. I remember one girl painting a bookshelf to portray her love for designer books and one girl painted a Christmas tree because she was excited for the festival. Later on they wrote themselves some positive notes so whenever they are not feeling their best they can just take a look and know they’ll be okay, like a positivity wall. I remember one girl had written “Stay Strong” and that really appeased my heart, since it was so positive and encouraging.
Later on we had done some yoga and dancing to stretch our muscles and get moving. I remember all of us dancing to the song “Happy” and just moving our bodies around. I felt happy to see the kids jumping up and down and smiles overcoming their faces. My most favorite part was the singing. We sang “Let it go” and even “How Far I’ll go”. At the dark night, the beautiful voices of the kids overcame the silence of the shelter.
Me and them truly did have a great time. And for one day as so it is, I was happy they got to experience something thrilling and a little different. Something positive, something happy, something that excites them. We should never undermine the true value of a home and never forget how privileged many of us are. To have a place we call our “Home Sweet Home”.
