Part 2 at the Chicago Dream Center

By: Adriana Fritz

Hey! My name is Adriana and I am a sophomore majoring in CMB at MSU. As my other friends have said, we have been able to balance this trip into service and exploring this city.

Dream Center Day #2

Even though we returned to the place we worked at yesterday, we did completely different things. We started off by going to another building which had a very large basement. In this basement, they kept many donations and things that they have to sort out, organize and ship to the different destinations they serve. One of the unique things about the dream center, is that they don’t only focus on the Homelessness and hunger of Chicago, but they have been able to grow and expand their service all the way to Africa, Haiti, Dominic republic and many more.

Our job as volunteers today, was to organize, separate and clean a large space of the basement. This section had many boxes full of medical supplies that had to be organized and boxed correctly in order to be shipped to Africa. This job did not seem easy at first since there was no order to it at first at all, but after a couple hours of hard work and team work, we were able to please the workers of the CDC with our outcomes.

After having a break and having lunch; we took a couple of boxes of clothes that needed to be sorted to their thrift store, were they are able to resell the donated items and with the earnings, they fund some of the mission trips.

After this, we headed towards another building which they call the chapel, where many of their clients have a place to pray, meditate or any other emotional or spiritual activity they might need to do. Here, we cleaned the stairs and dusted the rooms.

How did we feel after this..

We were exhausted, that is for sure, but after having a reflection over all the things we did, we realized that everything we did had and will have a positive effect on someone. We know that we might not had had personal interaction with the people in Africa who will obtain the medical supplies, but by organizing and selecting these, we helped the organization save time and  rush the process of sending the supplies to Africa. Little things to us, are big things to the organization and mean the world to many others.

After talking to one another, we thought that if everyone could do something like this at least once a week, and realize that not doing major things will also make a change;, our world would be a lot kinder and lot more united.

Time to explore Chicago some More!

After a very busy morning, we took off and walked down to Millennium Park and took some crazy amount of pictures at the Bean. We walked around the park and and enjoyed the beautiful city. After this, we could not pass the opportunity of having Chicago Hot Dogs, so a couple of us got our steps in to eat our Hot Dog.

Overall today was a great and productive day, and we couldn’t be prouder of all the work and effort put into the community and the Dream center. One day left, and we can’t wait to see what we will do!

#GoBears