At the beginning of the month, KITA hosted our 12-Year Anniversary Celebration. Most of our silent auction items were sold, and there was a good turnout of people too. The short film Listen seemed to draw a lot of emotions and the brief discussion at the end went well. In addition, the silent auction was very successful and we raised approximately $400, which will benefit our scholarship fund for the Core Medical Interpreter Training. Considering that KITA is such a small organization, I think the 12-Year Anniversary Celebration went very well and had great attendance; it was a great way to celebrate the organization’s hard-work over the last decade as well as commerce the organization’s vision for the future. Plus, it was a great way to conclude our three week long Language Access Film Festival, which was also successful.
For the entire month of March, the Language Access Film Festival and 12-Year Anniversary Celebration required a lot of work; most of my attention was focused on planning and hosting both of those. Once the 12-Year Anniversary Celebration ended at the beginning of April, I had a chance to relax for a bit. This month I did not have any major events or projects coming up that needed to be attention, so I faced a similar challenge I experienced at the beginning of the year. Furthermore, this quarter KITA collaborated with the Lexington Central Public Library, which is where we hosted our Language Access Film Festival. The Farish Theatre there is very nice and was a great space for us to utilize; in addition, the staff were very helpful and friendly, and they helped make sure each screening went smoothly. We also had a table set up right outside the theater so we could greet people, hand out refreshments, and pass out some flyers. I would definitely recommend utilizing that space to any individual or organization that needed to host a similar event because it has plenty of seating. Plus, the staff are incredibly helpful preparing the movie before the event.
Now that I had more free time, I tried to make the most of it but directing my attention to work that might seem more invisible-like posting on social media, scheduling posts, and planning future monthly fundraisers and meet-ups after July. I search for interesting articles that relate to the interpreting and translating fields or languages in general; then, I schedule them on Facebook in attempts to keep the KITA page active. I’m the kind of person who wants to feel like I’m being productive, even if what I’m doing might be small, not as pressing as planning a major event, or as visible. This quarter I definitely started focusing more time on my Legacy Binder. The past couple weeks I have spent quite a bit of time working on it because I don’t want to wait until the last few weeks of my VISTA service to do it.
Some of my favorite moments from this quarter are the two service projects we participated in as a VISTA network. I enjoyed these two service days because we got to help other amazing nonprofits that I might not normally work with. In the past, I had only ever worked with Seedleaf once during my freshman year at Transy; I really enjoyed getting to work with them again because I really support their mission and the Seedleaf members I’ve met are always friendly. Even though the work we did with Bluegrass Greensource and Seedleaf became somewhat robotic breaking apart and removing honeysuckle, I personally think it’s always great to be able to work with the other VISTAs and support other nonprofits in the community. Doing these service projects can be fun because it gives me the chance to get out of the office and do work I normally don’t do-even in my free time.