Discover UT

Things have been piecing together so wonderfully for Discover UT. Our tagline is "Endless Possibilities" and there truly are endless possibilities for all these kids. I am so blessed and delighted to have so many dedicated volunteers and especially my committee leads for working so diligently. They are truly the meat and potatoes of the project. I want to also give a big shout out and thank you to Raven for being such an amazing graphic designer for the event. I am excited for our T-shirts to come in from Empire soon. (If you are unfamiliar with Discover UT - read my last post!)

In other service news, I am having to sadly give my Learn To Be tutoring slot to another tutor since I will be starting my LSAT classes next Tuesday. I have been currently tutoring Justin from California and he is just the brightest 6th grader ever! I'm going to miss him but I know Valeria will took good care of him in my absence.

"The Learn To Be Foundation is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization that operates solely on donations from individuals, businesses, and foundations. It was organized exclusively for educational purposes on the principle of using the World Wide Web as a medium for people of all ages to grasp their educational potential. The Foundation’s hope is to foster and cultivate free online tutoring services that are driven by a community of users dedicated to teaching and mentoring those in need.

The backbone of the Foundation’s website includes tutoring sessions that occur online with the tutor and the student communicating via audio and a virtual whiteboard to create a seamless transition from one-on-one in-person tutoring to one-on-one online tutoring. Today, there are over one hundred Learn To Be Certified Tutors helping students across the country.

Learn To Be works with schools and organizations to provide tutoring to students in Grades K-8 in the following subjects:

• Math
• Science
• Language Arts

The Foundation also operates student organizations at universities and colleges to further its mission of providing free online tutoring and academic resources to underserved communities. The primary goal of these student organizations is to recruit and foster a college student-based tutor community and to explore and establish partnerships with underserved schools and organizations in the surrounding campus community."

Guess Who's Back, Back Again!?

So it has definitely been almost a year since I have posted on my blog. With upper-division college course work, law school preparation, and a plethora of other activities, I put writing about my passions and community work on the back burner for a little while. Well guess what . . . IT'S COMING BACK! YAYYYY!!!! 

Although I am not a current titleholder, I hold worldwide service very dear to my heart and continue to work daily to positively impact as many people's lives as possible. A couple posts ago I wrote about participating in Project 2012. Well this year I also had the pleasure of returning as a team lead to project 2013 in the same Dove Springs neighborhood which lies a few miles southeast of the University of Texas campus (if you are unfamiliar with project, scroll down my page and read the post from last year). This time around I volunteered at the Community Fair held at the local Middle School. It was an entire day (literally ENTIRE DAY, I was there from 5am-6pm!) filled with meeting amazing community members, teachers, and even students. I was extremely touched by the close knit community and their efforts to help raise their underrepresented school district to the top. Community members, parents, and students informed me how they have never had a college event at their schools. Inspired and motivated by these children's curiosity and eagerness to attend college and reach beyond expectations, myself along with a couple other students have decided to put on a Discover UT event for this school district. It will function as a mini Explore UT with representatives from each college and major sharing their major and passion through small activities and demonstrations. The main goal is to give students in this neighborhood direct exposure to college students from a variety of backgrounds as they "discover" the world of college through cool projects, games, and activities.

This was such a spontaneous idea of mine and it has been the most amazing feeling to watch everything fall into place with so many enthusiastic UT students and Austin community members on board to help as much as they can. I am extremely lucky to co-team with the brothers of Zeta Psi and Beta Chi. I am so appreciative in all their fundraising and publicity efforts. I had the pleasure of meeting with a few community members this morning including the Social Worker and Parent Support Specialist who works in Austin ISD, Jose Carrasco. The students are getting pumped about getting to hang out with college students and tinker with cool projects pertaining to a multitude of future options for them. 

The event is planned for April 27, 2013 from 10am-1pm. If you are interested in contributing in any way (time, ideas, donations, etc) Please contact me at lora.chowdhury@gmail.com. 

University of Texas has a famous quote of "What Starts Here Changes the World" - We are taking strides to change the world starting right here in our very own Austin community. 

Stay tuned for more details on the event along with other updates!

PS. I wish I had pictures from this year's Community Fair so I apologize for the lack of visuals on this post. Promise future ones will have some!