Reflection Paper On Volunteering

My volunteer experiences taught me that I value the physician-patient relationship of primary care medicine. Although volunteering in the E.D. showed me the excitement of emergency medicine, I found myself wondering about the follow-up care for the patients. Through other volunteering opportunities, I discovered that people of all ages and mental capabilities, including those with dementia or special needs children can build relationships when treated as equals and enjoy being listened to. Finally, my five years at the C.A.R.E. Clinic taught me the importance of adequate medical care for all community members. Together, my volunteer experiences influenced my life goals of becoming a rural primary physician who has the ability to serve and build long-term relationships with all patients. (798)

I believe that volunteering is an important experience that shows us to just how a group of individuals can come together for a common and selfless good. While volunteering at the Croatian Cultural Center I was able to truly see men, women, and children all come together to celebrate their Croatian heritage. While I was there, I was able to read to children not only in Croatian, but with Croatian books and texts that had significant cultural references and meaning. I also taught children and young adults cultural dances and saw just how important it was to be able to connect back to your heritage and culture even though you were an ocean away. I would describe my experience as being: fulfilling, genuine, and hopeful.

The United States, as some can say, is a country known to be a hand in help. Although, they are a help by choice not mandatorly. In the United States there is a great amount of volunteers for many volunteering programs. The amount of volunteers increase through the years for different causes. There are volunteers for schools, churches, sport clubs, and even more. Not only do Americans volunteer but also make donations. Americans do this sincerely from heart, not because it's a law.

1. Looking back over the times you have volunteered at BIC , what did you find most surprising? Describe it in some detail. Why were you surprised?

At global level, I will improve the lives of others and mine by providing the spirit of humanity and goodness to them to act like it. Develop weekly volunteering work that everyone should serve in it starting from their own needy people of relatives ,neighborhood , their city and community. Improvement the life begin from being cooperation and make good on the life of others.

Weeping sounds from babies are the first thing I heard when I stepped foot into my volunteering site. The weeping sounded as if the babies were hopeless, lonely, and in pain. Everybody around seemed so busy or just didn’t want be bother with a crying baby. I couldn’t just stand there and let the baby cry. I had to do something. But what?

The past two summers I was fortunate enough to go on two mission trips with my church. Our group teamed together with other churches and we worked with the Carolina Missions Team or known as “CMT”. This past summer was defiantly an eye-opening experience for me being able to work with an underprivileged community. One of the things I learned and realized during this trip is that even though these people have very little of anything, they are still so willing to give other people they don’t know so much love and compassion. Having this opportunity to volunteer has made me more aware of the needs, not just for the people in our own country, but also those in other countries who have much worse circumstances. The experience has led me to want to reach out to those other countries. Hopefully one day being able to travel and give them the help, knowledge, information and hope they need to prosper.

My thoughts on working as an unpaid volunteer is that it in contrary to not earning any monetary currency is that pay is still actually earned. Even though there is no monetary value to the work you earn seven fold in knowledge, experience, and future application into work and college. The knowledge of different type of works, such as food kitchens, carpentry, and social skills. As well there is experience gained in any job that is worked with and that experience will help later in life. As well volunteer work is an appealing item to be on a college resume as well as work resumes since it shows concern for both the community and for other people.

On December 2nd, I talked about the benefits of volunteering for my persuasive speech. When I chose to do this speech on volunteering, I was very passionate throughout the whole time I researched and rehearsed this topic because I wanted people hear out my point of view on volunteering and why they should continue to volunteering. Overall, I believed that my presentation went well.

Volunteering at COSI reminded me that children of all ages and backgrounds can get excited about learning. I was able to make a clear, tangible difference in the lives by teaching children science through enlightening experiments. However, because there are multiple age groups that come and visit COSI, I never knew who was going to see to my experiment. This forced me to become more flexible and think on my feet. It is always good to plan ahead, but excruciatingly futile because you do not always know what is going to happen in the future. Some will be good, and some will be bad. Being more flexible has helped me adapt better to my surroundings, face challenges more easily and most importantly become effective with changes.

Hoy (2011, p. 29) believed that internships and volunteering allow students to have a taste of the environment that they hope to be employed after they finished schooling. In fact, it is through internships that students are provided with the sufficient skills that would help them in the transition stage- from study to work (The Centre for Volunteering, 2015). In line of this assertion, this paper will identify the workplace opportunity I have chosen, and provide for four soft skills that I can use in the said internship opportunity.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer once said: ‘the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve’. In a study conducted by Volunteering Australia, it states that “96% of volunteers say that it (volunteering) makes people happier.” Many studies on the topic have been conducted and the results are evident that volunteering your time to help others can considerably improve the mental health in people of all ages. Therefore, members in the Sunshine Coast community who are actively involved in volunteering are healthier and happier.

I had the privilege of speaking over the phone to my loving older cousin, Linda Ann Johnson, who is in her third year of teaching elementary school – kindergarten at (School district) early on Halloween morning. Linda Ann choose to become a kindergarten teacher because every day is completely different with new and exciting experiences. She spoke of her passion of working with 20 different personalities on a daily basis. She enjoys getting to know the kids in a special way and getting to see them grow and learn. Her voice level rose as she became more excited just thinking of teaching the little kindergarteners.

Volunteer work. Those two words are dreaded by many people. Some associated it with unpaid, free labor; after all it has the word “work” attached to it. Furthermore, those that do “enjoy” volunteer work see it as it being a resumé filler or to compliment up your college application, but do not take too much out of the experience. But through the eyes of MLK, volunteering can be seen as so much more than dreaded labor or a resume buff- it can have an impact on the world. Moreover, volunteer work can be the change that fixes the inequalities in this world. On the surface, volunteering may not seem like doing anything, but underneath volunteering helps to solve the inequalities in the world. Specifically, volunteering through service learning helps to solve the injustice in the segregated schooling system. Service learning has taught me that taking action is the only way to make change in order to fight inequalities. ((Thesis Sentence)). ((Transition Sentence))

With this thesis I wanted to create a broader view on the systems behind all the critiques on volunteerism projects in order to contribute to projects that are both beneficial for volunteers as well as for host communities. The theoretical aim of this thesis was to contribute to the scientific debate on how volunteerism projects impact volunteers and host communities, through showing how this impact is influenced by processes of liminality and Othering. On top of that, I wanted to question the notion of “giving aid” as the starting point of volunteerism projects. The story represented two groups; volunteers and host communities, who joined volunteerism projects with good intentions. Some, however, unaware of the unintended consequences and how their expectations would work out.