Volunteers Gather for Third and Final Training Session in Alviso
Russell Wang – May 27, 2025
🕒 Read time: 3–4 minutes
Last Sunday afternoon, on May 25th, fifteen students met up at the South Bay Yacht Club in Alviso to receive their final volunteer training. Like the previous two volunteer training sessions, it was led by Catherine, the founder of CP Mentorship. They went over many topics, discussed current challenges, and also bonded together as a team.
Volunteers listening attentively as Catherine is talking about food challenges.
The first challenge they talked about was food, specifically, where to get food and how to keep food sustainable. Catherine first mentioned the source of the food. She hopes to be able to receive donated rescued food from other nonprofit organizations, such as Second Harvest. Speaking of Second Harvest, don’t forget to sign up for the Second Harvest Bank Tour Food Rescue, which is happening this Saturday, May 31st. There are only seven spots left! More information can be found here.
The team also talked about how to prevent the hard-earned food from being wasted. Rewards were discussed, and the team came up with the idea of giving cookies or other baked snacks from the afternoon baking electives.
Another challenge was cultural competence—or just how to make the kids feel welcome. Catherine mainly focused on the team’s attitude and suggested putting on a smile whenever seeing parents and kids around. Funding was also discussed.
After these discussions, the volunteers were split into 4 teams, with each team coming up with ideas on how to better market the summer camps. Each team presented their ideas briefly, with time to answer questions. The more advanced use of social media, the combination of classes, and people advertising at libraries were some of the many good suggestions.
One group presenting their ideas
The serious discussions were over. The remaining time was for team bonding. The activity this time was an art project with the prompt: “Something that tells a story.” The volunteers split up into small teams again. But this time, Catherine tried switching it up—letting people who usually wouldn’t interact with each other go into a team. The different teams brainstormed things, considered multiple options, and finally drew their decided design onto pieces of shrink plastic sheets. These would shrink, as their name implied, when exposed to heat.
A group is brainstorming ideas.
Different teams had very different ideas on what they would draw. Soon, it was time to present the groups’ little keychains and the meanings behind the drawings.
Naruto with CPM on its headband.
One team drew Naruto, symbolizing youth, perseverance, and other characteristics shown by the protagonist of Naruto, an anime.
Another team drew a small red dragon holding a flame. They mentioned that red was an auspicious color in Chinese culture and that the flame in the dragon’s hands represented passion.
The third group showed their folded monkey, with a complicated backstory.
The last group showed the entire sheet of plastic, all wrinkled up with a few holes in it. They named it something along the lines of “The Wrinkles and Folds of Society.” They used the wrinkles and folds on the plastic sheet to tell their story about a social issue they were interested in.
The meeting was wrapped up with a quick vote on the team members’ and their attending parents’ favorite keychain, and a reflection on the entire process. The entire team was now ready and motivated for the 2025 CP Mentorship Summer Camps.
