My Service Learning Hours At Harvest Hope Food Bank

A Service Learning project is one of the project requirements to complete the Bachelors of Science in Nursing (BSN) degree through Ferris State University (FSU). My Service Learning experience was completed at the VA Medical Center (VAMC) in November, 2014. This paper includes details of the facility along with the contact information for the coordinator of the project. A description of my role as a volunteer, critical reflection of my experience, and a synthesis of the Service Learning are also included.

With a master 's level education in social work, I see myself envisioning clients’ health and well-being. As a student, I will study and practice techniques, beyond a generalist perspective, that will allow me to give clients hope and the ability to see something greater than what they are facing. Upon completion of a Master of Social Work direct practice degree and certificates in gerontology and mental health programs, I intend to become a licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW). As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, I will competently incorporate specialized skills in different professional settings while developing my knowledge of a wide range of social issues and professional standards. With commitment, I wish to develop skills that will enable me to create or find hidden resources and services for my future clients, create platforms through counselling for victims of trauma.

The critical difference of service learning and the traditional learning style is that students are learning and addressing real needs in the community. Which connect students to the community through meaningful interactions with others, safety, and educational needs. This specific course includes readings, discussions, and activities to support

Two years ago, I was sitting in a dimly lit packing room, wedged between a stalled out pale yellow refrigerator and a stack of boxes, packed to the brim with all sorts of canned fruits and vegetables. People worked quickly here, moving boxes from one corner of the room to another, creating a rhythm of sorts. Thump. Swoosh. Thump. Swoosh. The boxes left in droves as lines of people congregated around the open warehouse door with open hands ready to accept what was offered while statements of gratitude leapt from their tongues. The amount of people waiting outside far outnumbered the volunteers, but the volunteers worked hard, they knew they had to today. It was 104 degrees outside and some of these people standing in line, with children in tow, had been waiting for hours. It was distribution day at the South Texas Food Bank and I was there to help.

I was put to work quickly, learning more about the process as I went, and managed to salvage one pallet an hour with the help of fellow volunteers. The Food Bank of Northeast Georgia works in a four-step process. First, they “centralize the collection of donated and salvaged products”, which typically come from local donations provided by places like Mayfield Dairy Farms, or Grocery Retail Recovery partners such as Kroger and Walmart (Growing Seeds, 2016, p. 22). The second step in the process is where I, and other volunteers, become involved. The volunteers objective is to inspect the donations received, throw out anything compromised or expired beyond a 6 month mark, and sort it into three categories: drinks, snacks, and grocery/dinner. At times, the focus was to sort over the counter medication and personal hygiene products. Regardless of what is sorted, the next step in the process is to distribute these items to one of their “235 partner agencies, which include soup kitchens, food pantries, senior centers, churches, and other hunger-relief organizations” (Growing Seeds, 2016, p. 8). The final step in the process is for these community-based partners to take these donations and distribute them directly to those in

This spring semester I had the privilege of completing my service learning hours at Asarese Matters Community Center. I chose to conduct my hours of service at this site because I felt like I could relate to the kids that are experiencing a life of poverty with limited mobility opportunities. Most my time spent there I interacted with a majority of the kids through basketball and competitive activities like billiards, ping pong and talking sports. While observing relationships and interactions between staff and youth that attend the community center I noticed the important role that sport and education played in the life of the children. Using my sociological imagination, I would like to explore the role of sport and the interactions and behaviors that takes place during competitive situations, also the role of education and the kids perception on going to college and using sport and education as a way of succeeding and escaping the concentrated poverty of the Buffalo communities. Using the lived experience that I encountered and knowledge acquired in the past, I will try to piece together a connection and express how the macro level expectations of a community to prosper influences the self esteem,behaviors and attitudes among social groups at the micro level here in the city of Buffalo and at Asarese-Matters community center.

The benefit of service learning for the student and community is again a better inform civic minded individual who may use his experience from service learning as a launching pad for career opportunities to better serve within that community. In an article published in the College Student Journal its author noted that with service learning “students gain further understanding of course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhanced sense of civic responsibility" (Strange,

My experience has been consistent with what we learned in class. This project brought light to the horrifying abuse that large number of children go through at a young age and this service learning project allowed me to better understand their suffering and their need for assistance. My service learning project made the course material relevant, because I could now better understand the necessity to provide support and comfort to children at a young age.

In the social and behavioral sciences degree, students are required to fulfill and complete a set of major learning outcomes that demonstrate various skills and knowledge learned while completing the program. The major learning outcome application requires students to provide the completion of a senior capstone deliverable and an upper-division service-learning course. In this major learning outcome, students are required to integrate the use of qualitative and quantitative social science research methods and social theory in order to gather an understanding of real-life social problems. Currently, I am using the social and behavioral sciences principles in my service learning work, as well as in the completion of my capstone proposal.

My time spent at Community Harvest included a Thursday and a Friday where my first day spent there included packing bags full of food for senior citizens who would come to pick up their groceries throughout the day. Furthermore, each bag contained the same groceries which made this task fairly simple in comparison to my second day there. One my second day, I assisted those who were shopping for their groceries. Furthermore, I filled out forms which indicated how many pounds of food each person could take. My role was to keep track of 7-10 different shoppers at times while instructing them to what items they could take and how many pounds of those items. Senior citizens as well as those who are in an unfortunate situation benefitted from my actions due to the fact that I filled their bags with groceries and helped instruct people on what groceries they were allowed to

When I arrived for my first day to volunteer at Irving Cares located at 440 S. Nursery Road, Suite 101 in Irving, Texas, Kroger’s grocery stores had just ended a food drive in which Irving Cares had received many boxes of canned food, bakery goods, bread, and large bins of produce. All volunteers sign in and out each day in a folder in the front office. After a tour of the facilities, I started unpacking all the canned products. This involved carrying a box of canned goods from the warehouse to the shelves in the food pantry, opening the box and placing the canned foods on the shelves, breaking down the empty box and putting it in the recycle bin back in the warehouse. Dented cans were to

On August 4, 2015, Vivian Cu and I chose to volunteer at the Second Harvest Food Bank located on 700 Edwards Ave. in New Orleans. Our Tuesday morning of service started at 9AM and ended around 11:30AM. In preparation for my first time at Second Harvest, I wore comfortable clothes that were easy to move around in and that were possible to get dirty in. The man in charge of all volunteer services, Vince, quickly gave me my duty for the day. There is a huge case of canned goods and my job was to put as many canned goods as possible on a conveyor belt. The conveyor belt would carry these cans to many aisles where other volunteers would put them into smaller boxes that had to weigh from fifteen to thirty pounds. After packaging these boxes, Second

I found Kathleen Cahill’s presentation on service learning to be very interesting. I have always been aware of how important it is to do service for your community. In high school, I had to complete 100 hours of service over the four-year span. This increased my awareness of the importance of service, and showed me a variety of organizations the exist in Erie, PA. However, I was never aware of the high level of poverty that exists in Erie until I saw Kathleen Cahill’s presentation. I was shocked to learn that the number of those living in poverty in the City of Erie, is around 30%. This statistic made me realize even more the importance of service, especially in the Erie community.

Service learning provides experiences that are valuable to students in counselor education programs (Goodman & West-Olatunji, 2009). These experiences increase students’ multicultural competence and clinical skills for interaction with clients. Moreover, service learning enhances the learning process and offers a practical connection to linking theory to practice (Burnett, Hamel, & Long, 2004). The Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES, 1990) endorses these benefits by encouraging counselor educators to incorporate service learning in their programs.

As a student, I have become more aware of the needs of my community. I have always worked at being active in my community to help those in need. Most of my volunteer work revolved around collecting donations and lending a helping hand at shelters. My volunteer work did not usually involve an academic base. I was not concerned with the ins and outs of why homelessness was a problem or the difficulty women faced finding assistance to escape abusive relationships. I just knew the shelters were always in need of donations and that is where I found myself helping most. In this paper, I will describe a personal experience I have had with service learning. I will also select one service learning idea from the National Student Nurses’ Association planning guideline that interests me and describe how this type of experience will enhance my nursing student experience.