Giving Back To The Community
Looking into my past I started to realize how much community service and volunteering was integrated into my childhood. Something as small as sharing my toys with other children or babysitting other kids while their parents were away was seen as giving back to my community. Throughout my life there has been plentiful amounts of occasions I spent serving my community and volunteering.
Between the ages of 13 to 17 I spent most of my time volunteering through my church. Me and fellow other kids would make candy bags and travel door to door giving them away to kids. I can vividly remember the smiling faces and tears of joy. It didn’t just end at giving away candy of other gifts to people, our church had formed a group of teenagers to share the gossip of our savior Jesus Christ to other citizens in our communities. We mainly targeted neighborhoods that were close to our church. Eventually, we were able to expand this service into other communities across Little Rock, Arkansas.
After graduating from high school and moving away from college I still felt the need to give back to my community in Little Rock, Arkansas. The university of Pine Bluff at Arkansas was located 40 minutes away from Little Rock, So traveling back on the weekends to volunteer was possible. The community watershed was another nonprofit organization that I invested a lot of my weekends into for serving my community. The community watershed is an organization located in the east side of little rock, which is one of the highest poverty levels in the city.
Inside the community watershed I was in charge of few projects in which I served the homeless population. Whenever food trucks would arrive to the building, I gathered the items off the trucks and organized them into the food pantry. We were receiving food loads every other day so it became apparent to know how to optimize our inventory space. I was also able to serve on the cook line when we held events to feed the homeless population. Me and other members had opportunities to host clothing and toy drives to give to citizens in the community too.
Life is a cycle. You put in what you get out and what you put out will come back to you in a different form or opportunity. Community service is important and can make significant impacts in people’s lives. It also allows for individuals to acquire life skills and knowledge, as well as provide a service to those who need it most. Psychologically volunteering can increase life satisfaction and make anyone feel great about themselves. Personally, I struggle with depression and high levels of stress, So giving my time and energy out to help another person eliminates some of those feelings.
Some of the real world skills I was able to develop were leadership, problem-solving, and collaborating with others. Not all nonprofit organizations will have a detail plan for which service they want you to complete while giving back to the community. Sometimes I was placed into positions in which I had to be a leader and guide others on how to get the job completed. A food truck delivery could run behind or a fellow team member wouldn’t show up to serve and I would have to make adjustments along the way while serving. Learning how to fit into a team with people who have a different learning or communications style has strengthen my teamwork skills.
Volunteering and community service has also helped benefit my social life too. It helped engage me with all the activities happening in my community. I’ve been able to create and maintain unique bonds with different people from various backgrounds. Most of my life I grew up around mostly African Americans, So going out a volunteering my time in different communities has taught me about interacting with people from a different culture.
There are more than just personal benefits I have acquired over the years of volunteering in my community. I have seen significant attention from recruiters from reviewing my resume. Employers really like to see how involve their employees are in their community because it lets them know more what type of employee they’ll hire. I’ve been able to develop and work on social and civic responsibility skills.
Overall, making the investment to better serve my community is a phenomenal experience. Being able to meet new people and learn different things about their journey in life has been joyful. If I could relive some of the experiences I made while volunteering my time to my community I wouldn’t change nothing.