Working with Clowns Without Borders

I was very excited about taking this course, I learned so much and it was such a unique experience to work with and hear about all of these organizations that exist catered to children in these adverse living situations. Naomi is a great representative of Clowns Without Borders and it was a pleasure working with her throughout the semester. She spoke so well about the organization, and I loved her story-telling skills. It was definitely a challenge in the beginning trying to figure out a solid time and place for everyone to meet together. Naomi lives in a different time zone and everyone in our group had conflicting schedules. Finding a designated person for communication on our end was even hard. I know I am terrible when it comes to email communication, but I was the only one with a slightly workable schedule for that specific task, and it also made me feel a bit better towards my contribution to the team.

Although it was such a rewarding experience working with my group and Clowns Without Borders, it definitely was a lot more challenging than I expected. I often get intimidated working in groups, especially when it’s with an older crowd with more experiences with these types of projects. For a long time, I felt very lost in what we were doing. And as someone who prefers clear directions and roles to help me understand the vision of our deliverables, the early stages were very intimidating because I didn’t know what right/wrong questions to ask. Especially when it came to the meetings, I struggle with both listening and coming up with questions because I tend to tune out words as I think, but I valued the information that I was getting from Naomi a lot more.

For a while I sat in this uncertainty, but once I felt the pressure of me not performing the best as my other teammates as I wanted to, I reached out to one of my members to voice my concerns. Chantel was very understanding and reassured me that we are all kind of in this lost state trying to visualize the pieces together, but she just encouraged me to voice what I can and deliver what I know. I know my strength is in psychology, and I am very passionate about developmental psych. I utilized my knowledge in that field and then eventually I was able to grasp a clearer picture of what the deliverable would look like.

My personal favorite element of our deliverables was the Reflection Questions for the clowns. As a psych major, I love being able to find ways for people to connect with themselves as a way to connect with the world around them. I think Ellis made that element really come to life and I really admire all of her work that she did on those sheets. Everyone had such great contributions, Josh is a beautiful storyteller and designer, and I admire him for being able to just present anything on the spot. I love how serious Chantel is and not in an intimidating way, she really knows how to take action and always asks for needed clarification. I am very happy that I took this class and was able to experience working with such a beautiful organization. I hope to have more opportunities for classes like this one, and hope to perform even better and really utilize my abilities head on.