Community Service Reflection

Civics is a Grade 10 course where students learn about our political system, how public decisions are made, and the entitled rights and responsibility for a citizen who legally belongs to a country. In a course like civics, students critically investigate local, national, and worldwide issues with a political perspective. One aspect of the curriculum is personal action on civic issues, by which means students are to analyze a civic issue and develop an action plan to address it. Through this, our class worked with an organization named DILA (A Day of Information for a Lifetime of Action), an organization that aims towards engaging youth in Ottawa by encouraging hands-on engagement in their communities, addressing civic issues that individuals are passionate towards, and to increase the importance of the democratic decision-making process. A DILA project main objective is to simply empower the young millennials, by giving them a chance to let their ideas, imagination, and voice shine.

As a student, I have demonstrated many works of service to my community and school. Service opportunities have shaped me into the person I am today and these projects have made me realize how fortunate I am for all that I have. While I've been doing these service projects through the years, it has been a pleasure seeing the joy on the faces of people that aren't as fortunate as I am. Service projects that I have completed include managing the fish booth at the St. Leo's Parish Festival, being an altar server at St. Leo's Parish, helping cook dinner for the Ridgway Fire Department during carnival day setup, participating in the St. Marys Light Up Night by dancing, and Christmas caroling to local residents. I also participated in a zombie/princess

Last May, I traveled with Alternative Breaks to New York for community service. During this service, I worked with Meals on Wheels who dedicate their time to provide food for the elderly of Manhattan. As I delivered the food to the seniors, I got a sense of fulfillment because I made them smile by providing them with food. Thus, I chose MDC’s Single Stop because I wanted to make a difference in my home campus by providing and assuring nourishment to those that do not have it just like I did in New York. As my first two years of college comes to an end, I wanted to leave a mark of my own here at home at Miami Dade College North Campus. During the month of September, I decided to partner up with a few of my peers to serve at MDC’s Single Stop.

For this service learning assignment I devoted my time and energy to working with Brooklyn Cemetery, the Food Bank of Northeast Georgia, and Athens Technical College. I participated in MLK Day of Service, which was created with the intent to “celebrate and honor the birthday of the famed civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr” ("There's Still," n.d.). This day of service stood to serve many different aspects of the community and benefited a wide range of populations, mostly in the form of environmental cleanup. Much of my time was also spent volunteering with The Food Bank of Northeast Georgia, whose mission is to “work toward ending hunger as part of an overall community effort to alleviate poverty” (Growing Seeds, 2016, p. 2). Through

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, What are you doing for others?” This quote bounced around my mind while at my first service event through HOSA at the Biosciences and Medicine Academy at Francis Tuttle. It was dawn and the sun had not yet poked any rays, yet me and a group of fifteen students were already hard at work tying up signs and arranging fruit. This experience was memorable not only because of the enjoyment I had, but because it allowed me to gain a desire for engaging in volunteering opportunities and also realize that through HOSA, I can gain improved communication, teamwork, and leadership skills.

My project involved helping the children in the park to better their skills in Baseball. Many of the children that went to the park had no basic knowledge of playing baseball, so it was my job to help the professional trainers in teaching them the skills required to play the sport well. The original proposal included that I had to maintain the field in playable conditions, but I went ahead and added dirt as well as passed a rake to remove holes in the infield of the baseball diamond. I also had to help the smaller children in batting practice by simply pitching them ten balls each, but I took it a step further by telling them in which way to position their arms and how to better their hitting techniques.

Since the 8th grade, I had been an avid volunteer at Children's Museum,. I worked as a camp assistant and hosted hands-on activities like tie-dying, launching mini rockets and building boats, accumulating over 300 hours of community service there. During my junior year, Children's Museum restructured their entire volunteer program.

Reflection 1 Learning about family policy while doing service learning can provide those participating in service learning with demographics and background information on families and communities. The importance of those doing the service learning and the community collaborating is to get an idea of what is going on in their community that results in using the services provided by family policies. Learning about family policies can help me to understand what services can be provided to families. It can also help me understand what requirements are needed to qualify for certain services. It can be beneficial doing service learning because it can provide me with the opportunity to gain real world understanding and connections.

For my service learning hours, I decided to assistant coach at Four Corners Charter Upper School. When I took on this task, being tremendously excited to work with the girls there and give back to this school. My role consisted of being the assistant coach to my sister Amanda Ramirez, helping her to guide and train the girls to learn the sport of lacrosse. Having experience in coaching high school girl’s lacrosse, I came in with drills and strategies to be the most effective assistant coach. The girls that decided to come out for the team haven’t ever heard of the sport, which became a good thing for coaching, giving us the upper hand for coaching and teaching the sport to the girls.

This semester I chose to do my service learning at Volunteers of America, a nonprofit organization that provides affordable housing and other assistance services to low-income citizens. Within this organization I took care of the elderly, both the one’s with disabilities and the one’s without; I helped the staff with daily activities necessary to the organization which affect the residents’ health. Not only did I help with the organizations’ responsibilities but I also decorated the facility for different celebrations and shared time with the residents in the foundation. Some activities included table games, physical exercises, beauty treatments and reading.

During the spring semester of 2015, I took the Service-Learning course in psychology (Psych 410). The general structure of this course included attending a 70 minutes long class on Mondays and Wednesdays to learn about service learning from the psychology field perspectives, reading scientific articles, conducting literature reviews to broaden my understanding of the subject, and in class constructive discussions with my colleagues. The course required 50 hours of community service at any local organizations or schools. From February 24 to May 8, I volunteered at the Arc of southern Maryland, an organization that provides residential services for individuals with intellectual disability. This organization has several homes in the Leonardtown area. Each home has four to five residents that are grouped based on the developmental disability conditions. As part of the class, I was required to write eight reflection papers about my volunteer site visits that were minimum of one page. Additionally, the class required me to develop a hypothetical program that would be beneficial for the individuals that I worked with.

After discharging from the Navy I have worked in various areas but mostly in Community Work supporting those with youth and young adults who have mental health issues directly and various administration duties . I would like to proof read articles connected to The Young Diggers In the past I have performed similar role when I assisted in proof reading and copy editing while working in community organisations . The areas I focused on were ensuring that there was no punctuation or grammatical errors i.e. typos , the correct use of terminology or if there was missing phrases. I also assisted in checking the writing style and most importantly the overall readability of the articles . Interested in assisting in other areas if there is any need

For my Community Service Learning placement, I am volunteering for PAAL, which is a program for children and youth with physical and intellectual impairments. Their vision is to offer individuals who otherwise may not get the chance, an opportunity to participate in a wide variety of physical activities.

During my undergraduate studies at Villanova University, I was able to give back to the community through participation in the school’s service and justice experiences. My first trip was to Laredo, TX with Habitat for Humanity. Working alongside the future homeowners was an incredibly rewarding experience. Hearing their stories and understanding how they connected with Habitat for Humanity was something I wish everyone could experience. When I returned to campus, I was excited to share my story and could not wait to continue to impact others through future trips and in my everyday life.

According to Kathleen Flecky and Lynn Gitlow, service-learning is defined as, “learning that occurs in experiences, reflection, and civic engagement” (Flecky & Gitlow, 2011). In recent years more universities are implementing service learning into their curriculum. A key concept of service learning is civic responsibility. Civic responsibility can simply be defined as your responsibilities as a citizen. As will be shown later in this paper, service learning can have many benefits not only to a student, but also to the community members