In our opinion, House Intensive Day was an opportunity for all the houses to build stronger relationships with their group members, gain a better understanding of their service learning projects, and evaluate the group's goal(s).  The C.A.R.E. Bears used this opportunity to learn more about the AIDS Walk, and strategies to improve the work we do in the community (i.e. bringing awareness about HIV/AIDS, and fundraising).

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On House Intensive Day this year, we visited the GMHC building.  GMHC stands for Gay Men’s Health Crisis.  This is an organization of event planners that work on educating and fundraising to support important causes.

While we were there we met  with Ms. Emily Parson, a volunteer for the GMHC, and she shared ways of how they organize for events such as the NYC Marathon and the AIDS Walk.  We then, created identification cards (lanyards) for all of the runners in this week’s NYC Marathon.  Ms. Emily explained all of the services that GMHC provides for people.  Some of the services GMHC provides are:

  • Food Pantry

  • Access to Health Care

  • Support in Housing

  • Support in Legal Services

  • Mental Health Counseling

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For more information about GMHC, please visit http://www.gmhc.org.

For more information about NYC AIDS Walk, please visit http://ny.aidswalk.net/

Our main goal was to learn more about how HIV/AIDS affects our community, and to learn ways to improve on how we fundraise for the cause.  The C.A.R.E. Bears have decided to increase our goal of $1000 to $1,500 this year.  We plan on achieving this goal by continuing to sell fruit kabobs during lunch periods, and having the class challenge where classes can collect small change and donate to the cause.  This year we want to improve on how we communicate and educate our school community about HIV/AIDS, in hopes to motivate them to participate more.  Ms. Emily Parson also agreed to join us  in January, when we start to fundraise,  to help motivating the school.

My favorite part of House Intensive Day is when we worked in groups, together, and helped towards a good cause.

-Elizabeth Cruz

My favorite part of House Intensive Day was when we listened to music, while working on the lanyards.

-Adalisha Perez

I would like to give a huge shout out to Ahilin Margarin for being a leader, and making sure that all CARE Bears were organized and safe when commuting to and from our destination.

Ms. Sasha

I would like to recognize Sarah Hue for demonstrating leadership while working on the lanyards.  Sarah was able to finish her set quickly, and without me having to say anything she moved right along and assisted other CARE Bears (including myself) with their set of lanyards.  Way to go Sarah!

-Ms. Sasha