Organize!

If I could describe what I do in Immokalee in one word it would be “organize.” Among my various jobs here, I organize in many different ways.

At Student/Farmworker Alliance, I help students across the country organize workshops, actions, and other events. I correspond to the students via phone and email and often send them packets and materials used to teach people about Immokalee and the struggles farmworkers face.

As an afterschool teacher, I organize activities for my students to work on in the classroom. Each day, I plan four “learning centers” for the children to rotate through. I have a homework center, language center, math center, and computer center. The activities at each range from worksheets to educational flash cards to games that reinforce the lessons they are taught during the school day. Making sure I have things for the kids to do during afterschool takes a lot of organizing and planning each week.

Another job we have as HM Volunteers in Immokalee is organizing four week-long immersion trips for groups for colleges and high schools. This takes an incredible amount of planning. We budget for the groups every meal, all the site visits, sleeping and showering accommodations, as well as transportation. While it is rewarding to share Immokalee with these groups, it takes a lot of hard work and organizing to make sure the experiences are good ones.

Even within our own community in our house we must organize. Every day we have to discuss how we will share the vehicles to get to our respective work sites. Since we live about an hour away from Naples and Ft. Myers, we are careful about budgeting our trips out there and always try to do several errands at once.

Organizing is a huge part of what we do in Immokalee. I am grateful for the chance to develop these skills in various settings. There is no doubt it will help me in the future.