Eagle Butte Thursday

Today was our last day to be working with the kids, which was pretty sad. Some of the things I discovered today and that our group talked about:
These kids could really use some permanent staff. The after school program is run entirely by volunteers, some of which, like us, who are only there for a week, and others who are here for longer. Discipline is a huge problem, especially with the younger kids. It starts with trouble in their households. Lack of strong parents who raise their kids responsibly, but also lack of discipline at The Main is a problem. The long term volunteers, with the exception of Dave, don't really punish kids for misbehaving and often either ignore the bad behavior or try so hard to be their friends that they don't want to hurt that relationship by upsetting them, and the short term volunteers are here for so little time that we don't really feel like we have a good idea of how the disciplinary procedure even works. It would be really great if the CRYP had more money to hire more staff (they only have 4 full time staff that are usually busy doing the more administrative things instead of working with the kids), or if some local high schoolers could come and volunteer frequently instead of only having volunteers who come from far away and then leave after a week or two, or a few months.
Another thing that bothered me occured when we were working in the kitchen today. We were told to go through the refrigerator and freezer and throw out anything that had expired or looked old. After going through it all and bringing boxes of expired foods out of the kitchen, some of the staff members insisted that we put about 2/3 of it back. Their reasoning was that when you are in such a poor community, you need to save as much food as you can. I didn't think it was right to save food that could possibly be bad for people when they already had plenty of good food in their pantries and refrigerator. AJ even mentioned this evening that the Houston Food Bank always throws out food that is expired, and it is benefitting poor communities just like the CRYP is.

I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that we can't lower our standards just because we are helping poor communities. We can't let discipline slide just because we don't want to hurt feelings or want to be the friends of the kids. We can't let the health of this community's citizens be sacrificed so that we save some money on food. It's unacceptable. I think the CRYP has the right goals and ideals, but I feel like some things should be changed on the administrative side of things to make the mission work the way it is trying to work.