Hi, I’m Michael and I’m here to tell you about my experience at the joint summer program organized by Asian GOP and Americans for Prosperity summer program. 

At first all I knew about the program was that we were going to do something civics related. Civics being the subject I disliked the most in school made me not want to attend the program. But after a while, my parents convinced me to try attending the program. On the first day, we were instructed how to make the phone calls and started making calls. These phone calls usually had the general idea of getting people to take a survey and patching them through to an office or important person. To make calls we used a program called i360 call. At first, I didn’t get many takes because I was inexperienced at this and we also had technical difficulties which didn’t make it any better. But over time I gained confidence and got more takes.  I slowly got better at it.

Walking was a fun activity for me because like phone banking we would interact with people. This came to me easily because I have plenty of experience on walking up to random people for fundraising activities from my school, Boy Scout troop, and many other places which I attend. With my personal experience of talking to groups of people taking surveys were quite easy once I knew what the topic was. This activity is called tocanvass which basically knocks on doors and taking surveys face to face with people. Normally we would find a walk book in our area and go to every marked house and try to get a survey. It was interesting to learn what people thought about the topics which included taxes, insurance, school choice, elections, and so on. But, what surprised me the most is how much a single individual could affect others through actions.

We also attended some meetings. Amongst the meetings, one is a city hall meetingwhere I met the mayor and learned about some of the city’s problems. There were consent agenda, board member interviews, and proposed plans and suggestions. All were put into action by common people like me who had just taken initiative to make a change. Another thing that happened during the time I attended the joint summer program is I made some friends. They helped me get better at the activities and made my stay at the joint summer program much better because they were usually cheerful and always made it enjoyable.

To sum it up, during the joint summer program we made calls, canvassed, and learned about a bit of government.Among many reasons I liked this program,the more important onesinclude informing the common people, helping others, and learning about America. I really enjoyed this program and I hope you will too.

For the Summer Teen Volunteer Leadership Program details, please visit http://www.asian.gop/events/summer-teen-volunteer-leadership-program-palm-beach