Did you miss us, cause we missed you. Our general body and learning community members have been busy this past month. While we have encountered a few obstacles, we persevered and stayed true to our mission. Keep reading to learn more about our October meetings, our first learning community session, hear from a learning community member, and get a sneak peek into the Zine.
October started with a bang! Many fresh faces joined the learning community eager to experience all that PEER has to offer. We also welcomed new general body members who have a passion for PEER’s mission but won’t be going inside the facility. We are so grateful for all the new faces and can’t wait to see everyone continue to grow and flourish throughout the year.
General body meetings have become an integral part of this organization, allowing students who are unable to participate in the learning community to still have a role in PEER. Due to challenges getting inside the facility, general body meetings played an even larger role this past month. One of our first meetings walked members through all the essential parts of a lesson and the best way to plan one. We then spent the remainder of the meeting brainstorming lesson plans and icebreakers for future learning community sessions. Another notable meeting was our most recent Zine planning meeting where we generated ideas for the first pages of the Zine. These pages included a recap of our first learning community meeting. The Zine will feature sections about this lesson and highlights from the meeting, along with fun additions like a learning community “lookbook” and fun facts of the day.
On Thursday, October 31st, our learning community members had their first meeting inside Madison. After catching up with the returning insiders, Hana, our beautiful discussion facilitator, began the meeting. The lesson focused on the question: Are humans selfish or compassionate by nature? We discussed various scenarios and shared a variety of perspectives on the topic.
After every learning community session an attendee will share their takeaway from the meeting. This week Olivia McLucas reflected, “In a way, every action could be seen as selfish. The word ‘selfish’ is usually described as doing something for one’s own gain, but is that the extent of the word? If someone acts primarily for others, but also because they would feel proud, wouldn’t they still be selfish if they also did it to make themselves feel good?”
We hope to see you at our next general body meeting on Thursday, November 20th at 5:30 PM. Join our GroupMe and follow Project PEER using the Linktree here to hear more about our upcoming events! In our next issue you can look forward to seeing a semester recap where we’ll dive into PEER’s best moments and describe what’s coming next semester.
One final note. On behalf of Project PEER, I would like to thank our president, Shamiso Maposa for all her unwavering commitment and tenacity these past few months. She is the reason all of this is possible, and we are so thankful for her.
Thank you for reading and we can’t wait to see you soon!