This week for class we went to Catholic Community Services (CCS), they empower the most vulnerable with programs that serve those experiencing homelessness and hunger, and newly arrived refugees and immigrants. Here is a link to their site if anyone is interested in volunteering with them. Below are the reflection questions prompted by my professor. 1) What prior knowledge or experiences have you had with CCS or similar programs? How has your orientation to or opinion about this issue changed through our service at CCS? This was my first time volunteering with any kind of organization like this, I have done a lot of volunteering in the past but this was different. Most of my other volunteering is from my times in our cities youth council and I would help host marathons. This experience made me feel like I was doing more and it was more meaningful and it helps expose myself to people I wouldn't normally get the chance to meet. As far as the service went my feels have changed and I see this as being more meaningful, but as far as the issues of homelessness go, I didn't get a chance to really talk with any of the people who came in so it hasn't been affected. But it is good to know that a lot of people want to make a difference in the lives of people who have a lot less than I do. And with them not having to worry about food in my mind it helps them be able to focus on other things that can help move them forward. 2) Why is there a need for your service at CCS? What do you perceive as the underlying issue, and why does it exist? What social, economic, political and educational systems are maintaining and perpetuating it? CCS has a lot of people who need them and they get a lot of food donations but without having people who can help them execute their mission than the food won't get prepared and it'll all be wasted leaving a handful of people without resources they need. The issue is that so people need more help than others and if it is not Christmas than no one is willing and wanting to give their time to help make it happen. As far as the social and economic and political influencers go I don't really know a lot about any of those fields to say one way or the other. But, I would say that where you have heard people say "those homeless people just need to try harder and get jobs" they are not speaking out of a place from understanding. It can be easy to forget how good so many of us have it and that is one thing I've loved about SLCC, they have really opened my eyes to people who have less than I do. So it can be hard to stick up for those who have less in an environment of those who want to rag on them out of their own naivety. 3) What similarities do you perceive between you and the people you are serving? How do you think you are perceived by the people you are serving? What do you think a typical day is like for the people you serve? What pressures do they confront? We are all people living in Utah trying to do the best we can in our own ways. I like the people we were helping serve might look at us like we don't really care or want to serve and just are doing it because we have to for a grade. I do hope not everyone felt that way or at least not about my attitude about being there. I tried to see what else I could do and show that I wanted to be helpful and I wanted to make them achieve their mission. I'm sure a typical day starts with breakfast or lunch at the community center then they hit the streets to find either a place to stay for the night or a means of keeping themselves warm and fed that night. Then if the community center is serving dinner they probably finish their days there and then have to go back out into the cold to sleep on the street. I'm sure in every day they have to deal with people who stare at them like they're animals or who catcall to them to "get a job" or "try harder" and on top of all of that, I'm sure that on a weekly basis they have to deal with the police relocating them or taking their stuff because they don't want them to camp out in certain areas of downtown. Then right now the biggest pressure is how do they stay warm when it's no cold outside. 4) How does the service experience relate to class material? I see how this service fit into last week's lesson on food waste and the tragedy of the commons, where a lot of the food CCS gets is from food banks or food that would be thrown away for being past its best by dates. Also, homeless people are some living proof of things like the tragedy of the commons because were someone wasn't looking for the long term benefit of the whole these people got shorted on the resource in some of their cases. 5) Name three things that stuck in your mind about the service experience. It was a chance to get to know the people around me, I learned more about my peers and about the people that work there. I learned that it really does take a lot of hand working together to get something of this caliber done, especially the dishwashers nothing in the kitchen could keep getting done without them. And some people were born with the need and drive to help others, one of the kitchen managers said he moved here from Las Angeles and he loves to make food and help people. Below are the photos I included in my Instagram post about the CCS
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
April 2020
Categories |