Farewell to KFAI

Well, today was out last day at KFAI today, and honestly, I'm feeling sort of sad. I felt like we did good work, and our person, Elizabeth, had a good topic, even though it was a last minute switch.
In the beginning, I was skeptical because I had seen little or no progress being made over the course of our interactions. We mostly just sat around, and conversed loosely about the issue of gangsters, which was fine. Up to a point. Last week I started getting worried when we only had one more time to meet, and I still had seen no progress being made. But today, today was amazing. She had nearly 2 hours of interview (on a last-minute switch, of all things), and the information she got was simply astounding. She talked to a woman who was involved in teen safe-haven, and how she thinks the pipeline-to-prison system works to get youths drawn into trouble. Her best interview was by far the ex-Crip turned teen mentor. He let it all hang out, so-to-speak, and gave Elizabeth nearly an hour and a half of information on everything from what comprises gangs, to how gangs in his community interacted, and the morals of a gang member.
In the end, that last minute topic switch turned out to definitely be worth it. Not only was the end result worth her time, it was worth ours, too. I learned so much information from her interviews than I ever thought possible in one sitting. The interviews were great, her questions were great, now the only foreseeable problem is going to be deciding what parts she should take out of the interviews and what parts should be left in her broadcast. :-)

Overall, the KFAI experience was a great one, one that I will continue to look back on and remember. Working with the kids was fun, not only because it helped me interact with different ages, and backgrounds.The topic of pipeline to prison helped me shape a world I had very little information about. In the future, Augsburg should continue to implement these kinds of community interaction. Sure, going to community gardens is great, but I think a more focused one-topic seminar works a lot better, and it shows who's really interested in the subject. I would definitely recommend this type of mentoring program to other students, as it brought both knowledge and fun experiences.