Photography at Quinn Center

As our fiscal year comes to a close this weekend, June 28th, we would love to share the photos the youth have taken at the Quinn Center. For two years now, we have partnered our youth interested in photography with the Quinn Center to take pictures at the event. This way, photographers gain more event photography experience all while working within their community. Our youth were at Quinn’s Christmas event, Turkey Giveaway, Senior celebrations, and more! Thank you to the Quinn Center for always considering our youth to capture meaningful events. Click through the gallery below for more pictures!

A Trip To ReUse Depot

Don’t you just hate how building supplies get tossed into landfills? ReUse Depot prevents this from happening. We recently visited ReUse Depot once again for our mentees to practice their photography skills! It was amazing to see our mentees put all that they have learned about photography to use, as well as meeting the store cats! We also learned about Maywood’s original Firetruck. The Firetruck pictured above was a World War II Firetruck that was donated to Maywood. This means that at some point between 1943-1980’s this Firetruck was in our Firehouse! We love learning about the history of our community, especially about our Firehouse. We can’t wait to visit again!

Photo credit: @mariah_julianna_

Mental Health Intensive | Week 2

Photo Credit: Mya Rose

We recently started our Mental Health Intensive at TFD! This is a four week program designed to give access to mental health resources as well as support for the youth within our community. One of our 3 pillars is Mental health and we feel that it is very important to share our stories and normalize the topic of mental health.

The first week of our program was virtual, but this past Wednesday we were able to finally meet in person! Kathy of kathykhang.com led us in breath-work during the first half. During our time with Kathy, we are able to focus on the space and the present moment and clear our minds of unnecessary thoughts. The second half of our day consisted of Erika Aguirre & Erika Luna from Oasis Project teaching different coping skills. We first discussed challenging experiences, our feelings behind them, and how we managed those situations. Afterward, we moved to stations with different objects to help cope with overwhelming feelings of stress. There were things like painting, journaling prompts, play dough, sand, scented lotion or candles, essential oils, and much more. Erika & Luna explained the purpose and benefits of each of these things and allowed each person to try out these out to see what helps!

We can’t wait for the next two weeks! Thank you to our facilitators for coming together to help make this possible.

Photo Credit: Mya Rose

Coat And Food Distribution | December

Photo Credit: Mya Rose

This morning, Impact Church and God’s Heritage Full Gospel Church in Maywood hosted it’s monthly food distribution! This month’s included coats, gloves, hats, and scarves in addition to all of the food. Every third Saturday of each month, the two churches join forces to make this awesome event possible. It is something special to help out the community and all of the families in Maywood. They also offer prayer for those who choose to be prayed over and everyone is incredibly kind and welcoming. It is an honor for TFD to be there to support and document something like this through photography. To check this out for yourself, you can stop by next month to God’s Heritage Full Gospel Church!

Photo Credit: Mya Rose

Content Creating & Collaboration

Today in mentorship, TFD was visited by Mylene to discuss content creating, as well as collaboration with other brands. Mylene is an interior designer who also has a big presence on social media. She talked with our mentees about various aspects of creating content. For example, having pillars of what your brand stands for, how to entice your audience, storytelling, and how to use things like hashtags to help build your brand. When it comes to the pillars of a brand, you always want to stay true to those things and to bring them out in every aspect of what you do. Another key point Mylene discussed was building community instead of competition and ways to do that. She went over things like hashtags either created by you or others and connecting with other brands this way. Mylene also shared that when giving a pitch, you want to keep it short and sweet, getting to the point and making connections the best you can while still being captivating. Our mentees learned a lot and we are grateful to have Mylene teach us these things!

Photo Credit: Mya Rose