After spending five days together on this trip, our group has become closer and more comfortable with each other through vulnerability, community service-learning, and the fostering of new friendships.
We started the day with more extremely nutritious legitimate Lucky Charms, as well as some Multigrain Cheerios, and Raisin Bran.
When we arrived at the Terence Cardinal Cooke Center, instead of going directly to meet the residents, Tom, the director of Volunteer Services, explained more about the direction in which the hospital is going in the future as well as certain challenges that the hospital is facing. We learned about how New York City has a surplus of beds in nursing homes and how the competition is negatively impacting economic stability of each nursing home. The lack of funding makes the quality of care go down in each nursing home and there are fewer robust programs that can afford to invest a lot in their residents.
Afterwards, Tom lead us on a tour of different sections of the hospital which we had not yet been exposed to. We were able to see the renovated Short Term Rehabilitation wing and got to see the great view of Central Park and beautiful artwork incorporated into the hallways.
We then joined the residents for arts and crafts such as painting Easter bags, making beaded bracelets and necklaces, and drawing Easter-themed patterns. It was great to engage more with the residents in a more meaningful ways as relationships we began on Monday continued to develop. The sharing of stories and mementos, even to the point of sharing family photos and creating physical tokens for people to remember each other by enriched these relationships.
The time flew by as our group became very comfortable with “chillin’ with the fam” and we stayed longer, simply finishing conversations or gifting trinkets to each other.
We broke for lunch, continuing our trend of feasting on sandwiches and while racing to get our lunch spot to get the best bags of chips. Today was a slower day and after answering many silly “Would you rather” questions, we began to play “Hot seat” where we were getting to know individual people better.
After our lunch break, the group split up between people who wanted to play games with the same residents and a group who wanted to work with residents of other parts of the hospital. There was an arts and crafts events in the Horticulture room and some of us were able to challenge our perceptions through meaningful conversations and learning about other peoples’ lives.
We eventually headed back to the church. The group had really taken to a lot of the card games from TCC and even after returning from the center, many of us were still playing Spades and honing our card game skills. Once we had eaten our dinner (kudos to Ben, Becky, and Maïgane), we had a conversation about different forms of stigma and how it affects each of our lives as well as facets of identity and how it influences our perspectives and our lives. We also thought about how these things affect the lives of those living with HIV/AIDS and other diseases. Altogether, it was a wonderful and meaningful day.
with love, openness, and wokeness,
Maïgane and Cathy
P.S. Here's a picture of David eating salad.
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