An Exercise in Gratitude

A Place Called Home’s Junior Journey Members Share Words of Appreciation

In the spirit of the holiday season, our Junior Journey cohort – a peer mentoring group for our middle school aged male-identifying members – recently participated in an activity focused on gratitude.

Each member of the group created an appreciation bag which they decorated with artwork representative of themselves. When they were finished creating their masterpieces, members had the chance to write messages of gratitude and drop them into the bags of their Junior Journey peers.

Said Daniel Cendejaz, Mentoring Assistant Manager and Junior Journey Facilitator, “The goal of the exercise was to become comfortable showing gratitude and appreciation, especially to their male peers.”

Here are a few of the messages our Junior Journey members shared:

“Thank you for teaching me how to play soccer.”
“I appreciate you for being my friend.”
“You have awesome hair.”
“Thanks for helping me with my homework.”
“I appreciate all the teachers at APCH who help me learn.”
“I am thankful that Mr. Larry spends his time with us.”
“I am grateful that I get to spend my time with very cool people.”

At APCH, our goal is to empower our members to build fulfilling lives and to make a positive difference in the world, and nurturing their spirit and ability to connect with others through activities like this one are a part of doing just that.

As the hustle and bustle of this holiday season continues, this is an important reminder for us all to take a moment to pause and reflect on the people and things we’re grateful for, and to share them!

So, whether you’ve supported A Place Called Home for years, have only just started to get involved, or are being introduced to us through this very blog post, we are grateful for you. Thank you for being a part of this work with us.

Changing the world starts at Home.