Give Kids The World

For the first time in my entire college career, I was able to tell my work supervisor that I am unavailable for Spring Break and can't work. And this is because I am finally going on my first ever Spring Break trip and I could NOT be more excited about it!!!! I got asked to go on the "Child Life Alternative Spring Break Workshop: Give Kids The World Trip" and am so pumped! They only take ten students, TEN students, each spring so I feel honored and lucky to be part of the group of ten. We will be traveling to the Give Kids The World Village which is located about 20 minutes away from DisneyWorld in Florida! GKTW is a home-away-from-home village that is ran entirely by volunteers and it is a place where kids with a life-threatening illness and their families can stay and visit for a week....entirely COST FREE! They get a week of vacation in a fantasy land and get to visit the Disney parks for free. Seriously, this place is like a dream land! If you have seen the movie, Letters To God, then you have seen a glimpse of the village. There is a mailbox there, from the movie, where kids and families can mail letters each day and many times they are prayers, hopes and dreams written by the kids, siblings and parents. There is soft-serve ice-cream served around the clock so kids can have ice-cream for breakfast if they want! I will spend the week volunteering with the group by helping to serve meals, hang out with the families and play with the kiddos and advocating for Child Life while learning different ways to incorporate where Child Life services could be provided. We each will get a diagnosis of a child staying at the village, learn about them and their diagnosis then do a presentation on it at the end of the week. Then to top it off, our group gets to spend a day at SeaWorld and Downtown Disney--possibly a trip to one of the parks is in the works as well!!! Yipee!!! Talk about the best spring break trip ever!!!!!!!!! And it is all entirely covered by Iowa (for me at least!) since I am a teaching assistant so it is covered as part of my tuition...double yipee! I have never felt luckier to be asked to join this amazing group of people going on the trip and I feel like it is a once in a lifetime opportunity for me! It warms my heart and I am so, soooo excited for it! It may have taken me six years of school to go on a spring break trip, but I would say this one is well worth the wait and definitely well deserved!