A Message From Chinchilla Woodsey
Hey everyone!! If you haven't figured it out from all of my social media already, I am involved with a club at UCLA called UCLA UniCamp. For those of you who don't know, UCLA UniCamp is a non-profit that is the official student charity of UCLA. Every year, we send over 1,200 children from low-income backgrounds up to camp. In order to do this, though, we have to fundraise money so that we can provide this camp at a subsidized rate to these kids. Throughout my years at UCLA, I have been able to see the impact & good that this camp is able to bring to these kids--it is truly an amazing organization filled with even better people. I was lucky enough to join this wonderful organization when I was a wee freshman (I know, I can't believe it's been five years since people at school started referring to me as a large rodent, either), and I have never looked back.
For my final year, I am apart of the leadership board in charge of training the counselors and organizing a week of camp that is focused on Childhood Grief Support. I am trying to raise ~~ $1000 ~~ in order to do this. All of the children that will be attending lost their parent/sibling in a sudden way. For two quarters, we, along with the wonderful grief counseling specialists from UCLA, have been training a session of volunteers so that they are fully equipped to deal with our camper population while up at camp.
This cause is very near and dear to my heart. Grief (and mental health in general) is an incredibly stigmatized topic in our society, even though at one point or another, everyone is going to have to go through it. These children just happened to experience it a much younger age than most--we are trying to give them a place where they can truly be kids and work through their grief surrounded by people who understand and want to listen. I am doing this camp in honor of two very important events of my life:
1) My sophomore year, I was raped by my co-worker when I was a campus tour guide. Although this isn't the loss of a loved one, I have spent the last few years grieving over the loss of myself.
2) Losing my friend over this past summer
