After four years of studying leadership, I finally completed the last part of my leadership minor: LDR 302 – Field Experience in Leadership. In this class, we each chose our own project where we were to create or participate in something that would improve on an organization or community through using our leadership skills that we’ve learned over the past few years. It’s a capstone class that requires 100 hours of work towards this project, and a final portfolio. My project? To create a workshop event on campus that teaches people how to have a healthy relationship with themselves, as well as the food they eat.
We all know that I’ve been a major advocate for this kind of thing, and even more so after overcoming an eating disorder. After living through all of that, it made noticing red flags and signs regarding unhealthy relationships with the self and food much easier, and I saw many of my peers having a hard time with those relationships. Knowing how it feels to struggle with a relationship between myself and the food I ate, I wanted to create a program that taught people what many of them have not been taught in school: how to nurture and cultivate a healthy relationship with themselves and the food around them. Thus, through the guidance of my LDR 302 class, the You + Food Workshop came to be.
I spent my semester putting together a curriculum for the workshop, information on booking and locations, advertising materials, volunteer recruitment materials, social media accounts and posts, and so much more. I was gearing up to have the final workshop be completed and ready to be executed in the last week of April. Then, something changed all of that:
COVID-19.
It took me about a week to come to terms with the fact that the event I had been working so hard to put together already wasn’t going to happen… At least, not this semester. I knew a couple people that were really looking forward to it, and now it was no longer happening. I e-mailed my professor, Jaime, to see what I could do from here. How was I supposed to pass this class if I couldn’t even do what I was required?
Luckily, we came up with an alternative: to create an “event bible,” as I like to call it, that would hold all the information needed to put on this event, whether I was around to help put it on or not. Instead of printing the materials, I made it all easily accessible by putting it on its own Google Drive account. This way, whoever has the login long after I’ve graduated, will be able to access it.
So now what? I have all of this information and materials, and a hundred hours worth of work put into this…
Lucky for me, I have one more year here at CMU. So for me, the “now what?” is that I still put this event on while I’m here! My goal is that next semester, I put on the event, regardless of the fact that I’m no longer in the LDR class, because I know that people still need this. This wasn’t just made so that I could get a good grade; I wanted this to really help people. So, if COVID-19 has calmed down enough to where we have in-person classes and can walk amongst each other on campus, I plan to put on the You + Food Workshop so that people still have a chance to know how to have a healthy relationship with themselves and their food.
Below is some of the advertising and social media materials that I made in preparation for the event. If all goes according to plan, you may just see them on your social media feeds and throughout campus soon. 😉
