For the Project LINK assignment, I chose to incorporate my internship with the Office of Student Community Service. As an intern, my responsibilities include initiating, planning, and facilitating distance volunteer events. This April, we planned an event in St. Louis and were able to incorporate a Cardinal game into the event. In short, we took a group of 20 students to a low socioeconomic area in St. Louis to volunteer at a clothing drive, and we ended the day attending a Cardinal baseball game.
While planning the event, we struggled to find an organization who wanted to utilize our volunteer services. After calling person after person, my supervisor called the mayor of St. Louis…that’s right, the mayor! Thankfully, he was able to direct us to a few people who could use some extra hands. In the end, we made a great connection with a pastor in the area (as a non-religious university, we were able to separate any religious aspect from the event) who needed help organizing clothes for a continuous clothing drive they facilitate at the church.
As we arrived at the church, the pastor explained to our group that the church has a clothing drive, but they were currently overwhelmed with winter clothing, while the current need was spring and summer clothing. Our job was to sort through the clothes, disposing of any winter clothing and damaged or heavily worn spring and summer clothing. At first, I did not understand why we would throw away the winter clothing, but the pastor explained that they receive such a great amount of donations that they cannot handle all the clothes. Furthermore, the clothing drive must meet the needs of the community, and the current needs were for spring and summer clothes.
Once we understood our duties for the day, the pastor walked us over to a large two-door garage, which doubled as the clothing drive. As the first person to open the door, I was stunned. Clothes, bags, shoes, and more were piled so high, I could not even walk into the garage…a single person could not step foot into this building because there were so many donations piled in the room. Obviously, this it is a good thing that people donated so many items to the drive; however, my first thought was, “We are never going to get through all of this.” Wow, was I wrong?! Everyone immediately got to work on the project. Students stepped up and took control of the situation, assigning duties and leading the group as a whole. It was amazing! While we sorted through the clothes, the pastor reminded us to only keep clothes that were whole, as in nothing damaged or worn. He explained that his philosophy of helping those in need is keeping in mind that we are all equal and we should offer items that we would wear ourselves. I believe this is a great philosophy told have when helping others in need. Within hours, our group had completely organized the clothing, cleaned the garage, and placed all the items on shelves…nothing was on the floor. It was incredible. Our work and help was very moving for the pastor. He was so grateful for our help that he could not hide his tears, which in turn moved students to tears as well. Overall, it was a wonderful experience for all those involved and will offer an organized, respectful, and acceptable clothing drive to those in the area who need it most.
No comments:
Post a Comment