Finding openness in Roosevelt & Green Lake
By Cindy Obi-Njoku
Hello dear reader, Cindy here again. We just got done with the activities for the day and I must say, this day is my best internship day so far.
We started the day off in the office taking turns to read the Sermon on the Mount, after which Cindy and Izzy gave us a quick rundown of the activities for the day. Cindy also checked in with us to know how we felt about the activities of the day and what we hoped to achieve in Day 3. The next thing we did was journal about Day 2 and I enjoyed the journaling process because it let me reflect on what I may have learned during the process. After journaling, we got lunch and then the fun began.
The first establishment we got to was open to receiving gift subscriptions and that set the pace for the day. We encountered some establishments who were non-receptive, but today they were less than those who were willing. I also got to learn today that coffee shops, spas and salons seemed to more receptive than any other kind of establishment we encountered probably because their customers would sit still for long periods of time. In a lot of the establishments, we would meet workers who were unsure whether to accept the magazines because they were unsure of the policies binding such offer and did not want to get in trouble for it. Along with our distribution to shops, we also left behind copies of The Monitor in waiting areas such as benches.
We finally got to use the buses today and I find the system to be easier than I expected, and the buses seemed to be in good condition and definitely way tidier than the metro.
We also dropped a couple copies on the bus before we left.
We took a bus to a different location when we felt like we had gone well around our first location and when we got there, the establishments seemed more high-end. I noticed that the first location we distributed to was much more receptive than the second. My observation on this is that the more high-end establishments had stricter rules on our offer and were more wary of ruining their reputation. Due to this, we did not get as much people who were willing to accept gift subscriptions.
All in all, this day was beautiful. The weather was nice (a bit cold, but we were dressed for it) and the sun was out. We made sure to take videos of the beautiful scenery and pictures of ourselves and the places that accepted our offer. My personal highlight for the day was one man in a bed shop who wished us good luck on our endeavour. I found that very kind of him. We got a total of 9 gift subscriptions on this day, and we are so happy to have achieved that.