For our last give I proposed that we clean up one of the gardens throughout our town. Going into the give I thought it was going to be just like our other ones, rewarding and special but not necessarily riveting. I was so wrong. When we figured out that the garden we were going to be cleaning up was in a very very neglected area of town, I know I was a little hesitant, and I assume the other girls were as well. When we got to the garden, our hopes didn't rise.

First off, the garden was so covered in weeds, there wasn't any grass. It wasn't even worth weeding it because then it would just look like a plot of dirt, so my mother helped us out by using our lawn mower. Once the entire lot was mowed, it looked so much better already, and much cleaner.

Then we took on the task of planting a few new flowers, I had already asked all the girls to bring in one plant each, but once we planted them we didn't have any water to make the ground a little less arid, because aside from being covered in weeds, our garden was as dry as a desert. Camille, Ms. Mary and I went to the bodega next door to the garden to see if they had an out door connection we could use to attach to our hose, but they wouldn't let us; so we had to resort to knocking on the door of the closest house. 

The next part of our give is why it was so special to me... We knocked on a man's door just to see if we could plug in our hose, we didn't need anything but his water, and we were trying to be nice, because we felt bad asking. We were so lucky. First of all, between this friendly neighbor (we later learned his name was Fabio) and the Bay Shore Proudgirls, there was a huge and extremely debilitating language barrier. Not only could we barely communicate, but we were just a bunch of girls volunteering our time at a garden. Not only did Fabio give us his water supply, he ran across the street to the garden we were working at with a head to the hose so we could spray better, and then later brought picks and giant shovels and proceeded to, with the help of another young family member, dig huge holes for us to plant in. We all tried to take the tools away and dig them ourselves, but our new friend Fabio was far to chivalrous to allow that. He then helped us plant, and went around watering our new flowers, and all the hanging baskets as we did some final trimming.

As we were working, Ms. Mary began talking to Fabio, although the conversation was slightly broken, we began to understand why Fabio was helping us so much. He had such a huge sense of pride in us for doing something for the area of our community that always gets ignored. He said he has seen this garden go uncared for for years, because no one in the community or the beautification council of the town ever cares for this section of our town. When we went to clean and he saw us he was so inspired that he had to help, and then he even promised us to come by every night at 8:30 to water our new plants.

Fabio wasn't the only one impressed. Although he helped us the most, as we were working, many people drove by and gave us thumbs up, or congratulated us on being "good youth" who work for our community.

This is why I do Proudgirls. I think being able to inspire people like the way I have been inspired throughout my life is what it is all about. Not only I am helping the town, but I am proving to adults throughout the island that our generation is capable of wonderful things, and through this organization I have learned to really have faith in myself, because my possibilities are infinite.

Thank you for providing me with this experience.