32 smelly, amazing teenagers, one school bus, a lot of peanut butter, 10 states, and eight days; This is Y-Corps in 17 words, but lord, oh lord, is it so much more.

My Y-Corps trip was Service To The North. STTN began July 22, 2017, in Frankfort and ended on July 30 in Louisville.

From Frankfort, we stopped in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Washington D.C., and West Virginia, each stop doing a different service project and learning about the state’s specific culture.

We rode in a school bus, slept on YMCA floors, and used public showers each night.

By staying in these less than desirable accommodations, I learned that you can survive without luxury; this environment caused my team to grow so much closer.

By sleeping shoulder to shoulder every night and being by each other’s side for 24 hours a day for eight days straight, we became a close-knit family.

A few of the service projects we did were organize clothes for a thrift store, clean gym equipment, work in a community garden, and clean hiking trails.

The most enlightening project was the community garden in New York City.

In the middle of Brooklyn, a community of minorities came together and started The People’s Garden. The People’s Garden serves as a consistent food source for the community and as a meeting place for the community.

While we were there, I got the chance to meet a group of children who had moved to New York City from South Africa.
It was amazing how much I could connect with these children. They may not have spoken the best English, but my heart connected to them through their contagious smiles and laughter.

The wall between natural- born American citizens and immigrated citizens fell and the love came pouring in.

When touring with Y-Corps, they make sure you are exposed to things that you wouldn’t normally see on a trip that you might be on with your family.

We toured Hershey, Penn., and beyond the chocolate, we learned about the entrepreneurship of Milton Hershey and the village he built.

Hershey knew the importance of giving his employees what they needed in the work place and their home life, unlike a lot of the big cooperations today.

We toured Quincy, Mass., the birth place of John Quincy Adams, where we toured his crypt and his home.

Adams was a key piece in our nation’s existence and to see where he lived and now rests is an experience most people don’t get. We toured Salem, Mass., and learned about the Salem Witch Trials and how the wrong people were persecuted and how it affected their lives.

We also visited New York City, Washington D.C., Boston, Baltimore, and even got spent some time at the Rock-N-Roll museum in Cleveland.

Even though I knew some of the people on my trip beforehand from other conferences, there’s nothing like spending eight days with them.

When spending so much time with a person, you can really see what makes them who they are. This allowed us to grow so much closer.

With this chance to grow so close, our team became extremely compatible. We were able to work as a team and get so much accomplished when working on projects.

STTN was the experience of a lifetime.

It taught me the importance of serving others, taking care of yourself, and digging beyond the surface.
Thank you KYYMCA and Y-Corps for forever changing my life.