Its Saturday morning and all I hear is the bustling excitement of 50 children and volunteers as we load up to head to the Virginia Beach Aquarium. This is the pinnacle of our “Fun at Five” programs, the one event that we have been planning for all semester. We finally will have the opportunities to just relax on the grass near the water and eat our ham and cheese sandwiches, pet the stingrays and catch an eyeful of all of the other underwater creatures that await our arrival. But this is just a small part of what makes “Fun at Five” so special to me. “Fun at Five” is such a relaxing and fulfilling program. It provides 2 opportunities every week for us William and Mary students to be involved in our local community and to wind down a bit. Being a college student comes with its rigor, but fun at five provides not just an opportunity for community service but a time for us students to have some great fun with some great kids. Whether it is playing “train”, foursquare, an intense game of football, merely just drawing with chalk or painting, there is something for all of us to do with the children and just step away from the daily grind of William and Mary. The kids are always so excited to see us, which in itself is o very fulfilling to see them running towards our cars as we pull into the neighborhoods. Some of them run up and try to tackle us or climb all over us; where as some just greet us with a heartfelt hug. The kids always have something funny to say that can make even the coldest of hearts melt. They have a way of making us feel so special for hula-hooping or just chasing them around. We have so many different volunteers come to our “Fun at Five” shifts with uncertainty initially as to what to expect. Some shy maybe even nervous as to whether the kids will accept these newcomers or not, and by the end of the session they kids and the volunteers are laughing, joking and playing as if they have known each other for years. As we go to leave every Wednesday and Thursday some of the kids always ask us if we are coming back next week to just reassure them that we indeed will be back.   It is so easy to forget to take a break and have some fun every now and again as we continue in our academic endeavors. So why is “Fun at Five” so important to me? Because nothing is better than pulling up to a community midweek after writing papers, pulling all nighters studying for exams, and countless hours of reading to prepare for class, to have all that stress and anxiety wander away if only for a short time and have some good old fashioned fun with some amazing kids.

Submitted by Anthony Batt, April 17, 2011

Hezekiah, a shy and quiet nine year old who lives with his grandmother, was running and laughing as he played "duck duck goose" with the mentors and other children. In the year I have worked with Hezy, I have seen him smile only a few times. That carefree smile made the stress of the day worth it.

The new mentoring program at WM is one of the many programs the Campus Kitchen at William and Mary has enacted to facilitate a community between the clients we serve meals to and the college students who cook and deliver those meals. One of these programs is the Fun at Five program, which goes into the neighborhoods we deliver meals to and plays games and runs activities with the children who live there.

While running the Fun at 5 program, I have gotten to know many of the families and children well. I know their names, their likes and dislikes, the sports they play and the allergies they have. Through games and activities, I have formed close bonds with the children and my relationship with the children has become a large part of my life. I have a strong desire for each one of them to succeed. However, at times I worry that their success is hampered by a lack of confidence in their potential, as well a lack of problem solving social skills that will help them in the real world (many of them use aggression and fighting, rather than language, to solve conflict). It has become apparent to me through my relationship with the kids that many of the children could benefit from a mentor type figure who could instill in them this confidence and help encourage conflict resolution with words, not aggression. It is a hope for the children’s success that inspired me to begin the mentoring program.

The preparation for the first session of the program was extensive. We had to recruit the mentors, reserve the room, plan the activities, advertise the program to the clients, obtain permission slips, etc. The first day on April 2 went very well for our first session. We tie-dyed t-shirts, which allowed the mentors and the children to work together one on one to create something tangible the children could bring home. We also had lunch, worked on homework, and played games that included the children and the mentors, such as “duck duck goose.”

There are definitely improvements to be made to the program. Our next session should include more structured activities like the tie-dying t-shirts to help facilitate the mentor-child bond. Overall, however, I have great hopes for the mentoring program’s potential. If we continue throughout next semester, recruiting more children and mentors, and bringing the children to campus for more sessions, the relationship the children could have with their mentor could have an enormous impact on their life and their future success. Hezy’s smile gives me hope that this impact is possible.

Submitted by Cassie Powell

The first time I worked in Campus Kitchen was with a good friend Tony Batt. We made it a policy to try serve the Williamsburg community at least once every week; we shared the belief that learning to be a servant in life was one of the most rewarding and important skills a man could learn.

The Campus Kitchens atmosphere wasn't what attracted me. The people weren't particularly effusive at first. Rather the way they moved with purpose and the overwhelming sense of working to save and protect something made me believe that my actions within this organization could create radical change in the Williamsburg area. The first time we volunteered we cooked. The experience was largely in silence. To an onlooker observing only one of us, the intensity of our effort and our dull movements would be what stuck out. To an individual looking at us all, the portrait of the Campus Kitchen experience would be one of extraordinary symmetry. The focus of the experience being on the sum of parts rather than the singularity of them.

So now I'm a co-client relations chair. We make deliveries to Dunning, Blayton, and New Hope Street. I don't cook now, but I enjoy the privilege of seeing the face of each resident as they receive their food; some faces seem dull, some hopeful encouraged by a good day, some seem sad, put through the furnace of life's troubles, but one thing remains the same: When that plastic box, filled with food, is lifted from those ugly Campus Kitchen bags they change for a breath. Something in their eyes becomes alert; the hues becomes brighter and for the duration of about a sneeze those tired eyes meet yours, the edges wrinkle and their eyes more than their mouths smile. Thank You Campus Kitchens.

I’m excited to write this blog post because a) I love Campus Kitchen! b) I am putting off studying and c) I have never written a blog post before.

I began working with Campus Kitchen the summer between my freshman and sophomore year.  I was taking chemistry classes, and cooking was a fun way to spend my Monday and Thursday afternoons.  When school started, I became a shift leader and the next year I became a menu planner.  All this led me to take over the role of operations officer this semester.  Through it all, my love of the organization has grown – the people are spectacular, our clients are the best, and the organization is for such a good cause!

In this past week, I got to lead a cooking shift on Valentine’s Day with a volunteer group from the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority.  The girls were great, and they had smiles on their faces the entire shift; never once did someone complain about giving up part of their holiday.  There was such a large group of them that we made all of our regular meals AND prepared the Blayton Building dinner in two hours.  The next evening, the Blayton residents loved the BBQ chicken, potato salad, baked beans, garden salad, and Jell-o dessert we had made for them!

While it may seem like a bad thing that I am procrastinating by writing this post, I think every student at this college needs a break from the books.  Campus Kitchen provides a great means for getting this much needed (and deserved!) downtime.  From cooking on a Monday night to going to interact with the kids on Wednesdays, CKWM has something for everyone.  Sometimes it seems like just another thing on my calendar, but when the shift is over, I feel so refreshed and ready to tackle the next thing.  Realizing that other people have situations that are far worse than not being able to understand biochemistry always helps me keep a good perspective.

This blog is definitely not the first “first experience” I have had in Campus Kitchen.  I always knew how to cook, but it was with this organization that I did it on a large scale for the first time.  It sometimes is hard to take a delicious meal idea and make it work for 50 people!  Working on menu planning has made me think more about what I eat.  Being a student can sometimes translate into being an awful eater, but it doesn’t have to.  This same idea goes for those who don’t have a large income.  Sometimes it is easier and cheaper to eat things that aren’t necessarily healthy, but with a little effort, both money and nutrition can come into balance.

Campus Kitchen is one of the best organizations I have been involved with on the William and Mary campus.  I am always so proud to tell people about what we do, and I love seeing volunteers get that same inspired feeling.  It’s something I encourage every student to fit a little time into their schedule for!  You definitely won’t regret it!

   Today (Thursday) I walked to the Presbyterian Church to follow my usual routine of meal planning for the meals that would be cooked tonight and then delivered tomorrow afternoon.  I usually try to get there at around 11am so I can help with the food recovery shift and pick out what I will eventually plan a meal out of.  I was a little late, but fortunately (or unfortunately for Amanda, the food retriever on Thursdays) because of miscommunication, Bob was late in bringing the food. 

      Once we chose everything we wanted, we started to go through and I started getting ideas on what to make.  But from the tomatoes I had helped to pick out, at least a quarter if not half of them were no good.  Moreover, looking at the total amount of vegetables and knowing that there were no baked goods, only fruit, for the desserts, it was going to be a stretch.  But stuff like this has happened before, and as our motto is “use what you have to do what you can”, I just did what I had to do.  The meal plan is supposed to feed 50 people in the New Hope community on Fridays.  So, we went through the tomatoes, made fruit the dessert of the day, and combined the protein, carbohydrates, and vegetables into a sandwich.  I did what I had to do because in the end, what we do here affects people.  What we do here DOES matter.

-Nicole Leger (meal planning)