A Hunger Banquet

We are less than a week away from our first Hunger Banquet. We are very excited to see all of our hard work slowly coming together.

Without giving too much away, I think it’s safe to say that the guests will be in for a treat! We have Iva and Pastor Carol from Place of Hope coming in to speak, a great video and slideshow to play, entertainment, and a really great meal.

Our buttons should be coming in soon – they will be great gifts for the guests that show up.

I am very, very excited for the event, and I know all of my other BLOVES are, too.

If you have questions, feel free to contact us at servlearn@csbsju.edu.

Also, check out the new videos we made about each Bonner. They will be on their personal ‘about’ page.

Hope all is well, internet.

BLOVE,

Brian

The Fireside Room just got Hotter…

Hello B-Loves!

Wednesday marked the very first CSB/SJU Bonner meeting. The evening started out with an (unofficial, but very enjoyable) dinner at our favorite establishment, The Gorecki Dining Center.  After words, we all reunited in the Fireside room where the meeting began!

This spring, all of our first year Bonners are going to have the chance to go on an Alternative Break experience (ABE) trip. Last year, five Bonners went to the Anathoth Community Farm and had a great time. Locations for this coming year include Kentucky, New Orleans, New Mexico, St. Louis, and the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. It looks like a great time!

The Bonners also spent some time learning about community asset mapping. We had the chance to take a look at what makes communities successful and how to recognize these assets without dwelling on the areas that need work. We also brainstormed assets for the St. Cloud area as well as the CSB/SJU campus.

The community asset mapping proved very helpful as we ended our evening brainstorming for our upcoming hunger banquet. The date for the hunger banquet is November 18 and the Bonners are VERY excited to be able to bring this educational and enjoyable event to our campus. It should be a wonderful event!

We are in the final stages of placing all of our first year Bonners at their sites. We are so excited to get them into the community and see what they can do!

With much B-Love,

Adia Zeman

Bonner Orientation Videos

Orientation – Fall, 2009

Greetings,

This past weekend, CSB/SJU welcomed 10 new students to the Bonner Program at our two-day orientation. Friday, August 28th was our first day of orientation. We met at Gorecki and started off with ice breakers and dinner for all of the Bonners to get to know each other. After dinner, we had a wild game of Bonner BINGO (Bonner-themed BINGO where the numbers are replaced by facts about Bonner and ‘BINGO’ is replaced with ‘BONNER’). We also presented Bonner 101, a PowerPoint about the Bonner Foundation, and a little information about social media in the program.

We ended the night with a group discussion on youth development (our issue track). We had a great discussion about possible activities, new programming, and the importance of being a college mentor. Living in the St. Cloud community gives us the great opportunity to work with many different youth groups and we want to take advantage of that.

We started our second day of orientation on Saturday, August 29th. Maribeth Overland (Mo) presented a workshop on the enneagram and leadership. It was very interesting to see how we all identify with different aspects of leadership and personality, and how knowing that can really help the way we work together. Following the enneagram workshop was the BWBRS training. Lindsey taught the new Bonners how to set up CLAs, track hours, and the basic functions of BWBRS.

We  went to St. Benedict’s Senior Community (SBSC) after BWBRS and lunch to play BINGO with the residents. Around 30 residents participated in the hour-long BINGO game; the Bonners spread out and sat along side their own group of residents to keep them company while they played. It was a great experience to work with the witty and quick residents; they had a lot to say and were very excited to play. I think it is important to work with populations unlike my own; understanding others and the way other people live will only help the growth and development of oneself.

After BINGO, we went back to CSB/SJU to go through paper work and expectations. We ended the official orientation with the Cover Story Workshop, a workshop designed to allow us to outline our short-term (and long-term) goals for the program. It was a great opportunity for us to decide and talk about where we see Bonner going this semester, bounce ideas off of each other, and work together (for the first time) on a project.

After the official orientation, we all stayed around to play a few rounds of catch phrase.

Our group dynamic and our individual members are amazing, unique, interesting, and passionate; we are going to have a lot of fun this year and accomplish many things – I can feel it!

BLOVE,

Brian

Greetings…

Greetings…

The CSB/SJU Bonners are approaching their first fall semester. We started last January with nine of us, including our Director, and had an orientation to kick-off the beginnings of Bonner at the College of St. Benedict/ St. John’s University. Since then, we have put on one campus-wide event, traveled three times (the IMPACT conference in Washington, DC; Anathoth Farm in Wisconsin; and the Summer Leadership Institute in Stetson, Florida), presented two workshops, and won one award for our Community Partner Profile. We also worked on our Issue to Impact project with Place of Hope Ministries with a focus on Hunger and Homelessness.

We’ve accomplished a lot in a few months and plan on accomplishing more this semester.

Please check out our Meet the Bonners page to learn more about our first nine Bonners, and our new Bonners for the 2009-2010 year. Other things that are worth checking out are our Bonner videos, Bonner photos, Bonner newsletter (coming soon), and Bonner event page.

We had a great few months last spring working to start up our Bonner Program; we know it will only get better.

Thank you for visiting,

Love,

CSB/SJU Bonners