This Saturday, April 21, the girls of the Boost! Service Corps Team will brave New Haven's landscape in a 20-mile bike ride in the Fourth Annual Rock to Rock Earth Day Ride! The rocks in Rock to Rock are the two ginormous land masses that jut out of the ground: East and West Rock.  After hearing about Rock to Rock from United Way, an event co-sponsor, our team decided to take on the challenge, considering that many of the great non-profits which benefit from this event have programs in the schools Boost! works with. 

Friday, March 2, Barnard School had a Pep Rally featuring the Yale Precision Marching Band and Xtreme Impact! Students in grade 3 through 8 gathered to sing and dance to Yale Precision Band's rendition of "Party Rock", as well as view impossible feats of strength by the men of Xtreme Impact! These feats included blowing up a hot water pack to the point of popping, bending a metal horseshoe into the shape of a heart, tearing a thousand page phone book in half, lifting two students over his head as they held on to a metal rod, bending an iron skillet into a taco, and breaking 5 cement bricks in half with his bare arm!

    When I was 21 years old, I realized there is so much more in the world outside the little bubble I lived in. I traveled on an international excursion to Tanzania, Africa to spend a month teaching children living in poverty. I worked with 200 primary school-aged students, 65 of which were HIV positive. The poverty was rampant in the village of Moshi, and necessities were hard to come by. Getting past the language barrier, and the stigma of HIV was a difficult task. My month volunteering was one of the most stressful, frustrating, amazing experiences of my life, to say the least. Of course I traveled halfway across the world hoping to make a huge impact on every child I came in contact with yet I realized if you make one child smile, that in itself is an impact. The work I completed there left a longer lasting impact on myself, and I learned so much about myself; I changed forever.