Introducing... Erika and Elissa!

Sorry for the late post everyone! I still wanted to put up a post to talk about last week’s run even though we have another run tomorrow. Last week we had our two leaders lead the program for the first time and I couldn’t be more proud of them. Elissa May (EMay) ran the programming (reading off the guidelines and directing people what to do while putting the bags together, and Erika Bareiss helped her facilitate. They were the ones that led the groups out into Harvard Square.
While on the groups there was a conversation that came up about the Tannery. The way that it is set up is that we have to go down a set of stairs to get to the people below. On that night we went down and there were two men, one of whom we see sometimes. The other man was one we had never seen before. They were both really friendly and the new man said to us something like “You don’t have to worry about anything girls! You’re safe with me!”. Of course, most (if not all) of us were now comfortable going down there. Once we left we talked about how he had acted. We thought that he seemed like he wanted to seem “normal” almost as if he didn’t belong there. I pointed out stairs in the Tannery and how they could be seen as a metaphor. We had to be able to come down to them. To some people that may be seen as going down to their level, or rejecting our sense of normalcy in order to give what we can. And honestly, I am okay with taking that on. The people in my group agreed with me when saying that we have now become comfortable with it. Showing people that it is okay to be equal is something that we aim to do. If that means that we go down those stairs to hold a conversation and give a smile with a sandwich, then we will keep doing it.