Are you a giver? Do you enjoying giving to others? Do you give of yourself and your time freely, without delay or hesitation?
Do you talk-the-talk or walk-the-walk?
Giving to others gives me a warm feeling inside, especially when I give of myself to the MYGIFT Girls every month. Since MYGIFT started in 2007, each month, I tell the girls that it doesn’t matter, if I have one girl or 100 girls; I will go through with our entire agenda. Well, last program year, we had one girl to show up for the entire day. At first, I was in disbelief and I kept expecting the door to open and girls to walk in and say “Hi Miss Michelle”, I’m sorry for being late; however, that never happened. We always prepare for 20 girls and we set up for at least 10 girls every month. I have to be honest, I thought about asking her to call her mom to pick her up, but I kept hearing my own voice saying “No matter how many girls we have, we’re going through with our entire agenda”…so we did. Nikki and I started the day, as if we had a room full of girls. The young lady, D’Azanti, was a little puzzled, but she played along, because I guess she was expecting other girls to join her shortly…but they didn’t.
The three of us had a great day; we watched a documentary called “The Souls of Little Black Girls”. When we started watching the documentary, I was concerned that she would not be interested in spending the day with just two staff persons and I was right because she asked if she could leave early. Initially, my heart sank, but I smiled and said “Yes, you can leave early”, immediately after I responded, I was worried that I might have answered too quickly, but I didn’t want her to think that she had to stay all day. After the documentary, I told her that Nikki and I are going to stay until 3pm, so if she wants to stay with us and complete the workshop, she was welcomed to do so. She immediately said that she really wanted to say, so she called her Mom back and told her that she was staying. I stayed true to my word and we rolled out the entire agenda. We gave Dee our undivided attention by answering all her questions about the documentary, as well as other questions she had about image and the importance of having a positive image. We had Chipotle for lunch and Rita’s for desert. She said that it was the best workshop ever for her and I had to agree, because it’s never about the number of girls that attend each month, it’s always about the quality of the curriculum that we prepare and how well we present it the girls. It’s about giving of yourself, so that you can pass the blessing forward.
I learned a valuable lesson that day…be true to yourself and your commitment to giving to others.
