For this blog post I'd like to reflect on my service progress so far this semester. There actually isn't too much progress to speak of at this point. I'm interested in doing environmental related service, and I've emailed a couple potentials. Nothing is set yet, so I definitely have some work to do. This lack of service is really only due to my slacking. I took too long to contact the service partners. Now this isn't to say I won't get the service done; I fully plan to complete the 30 hours. Unfortunately this means I might have to knock out some hours over spring break. I'm ok with this. Like I said in a previous post, I was active in community service in high school. Thankfully that means I know what kind of community service I can do at home. For that reason, I'm pretty set for spring break as far as the community service goes. I don’t think I’ll be doing any environmentally related service while at home. It will most likely consist of the boring uneventful kind of service. But that is a great thing about helping the community. No matter what kind of service you do, it still benefits the community. And there aren’t always positions available that everyone finds fun. Part of volunteering is devoting your time to whatever needs to be done. Sadly, this includes the peon-type labor that no one enjoys.  This type of labor is especially important for many organizations because they wouldn’t need to hire people for those chores. This saves them money and allows them to devote more of their funds to doing service for the community.

Now that my group has worked together a few times, we have come up with a few potential problems with our chosen service partner. For this blog post, I thought I’d go over a few of these and explain how they hinder the volunteer process from working at its full potential. The first problem we came up with was the interest with volunteering. Since volunteers don’t get paid, organizations must take necessary steps to ensure that their volunteers are satisfied. Many people feel good about volunteering in the short term, although many organizations have agendas that require time. What I mean by this is that in order for these types of organizations to achieve their goals, they must have dedicated volunteers. This ties into another problem we saw: awareness. There are so many services that could benefit people yet remain wholly unknown. This is where awareness comes into play. Organizations that provide service to people have to advertise or promote this in the community. I know there are many services even on campus that a lot of students either don’t know about or don’t utilize. That is why gaining the attention of the target demographic is essential in these organizations working effectively. Another potential problem we saw involved the volunteer training. This also ties into the volunteer interest. Some volunteer organizations require a lot of training for their volunteers. For these especially it is important to retain volunteer interest because it is a waste of time and resources to continually train new volunteers. This is why we saw a potential problem with this aspect of volunteering. I think there should be a larger emphasis on the efficiency of training volunteers. 

What is Community Service?

For my first post, I’d like to open the discussion about community service. For example, what defines community service and what exactly does it entail? To me, community service is not simply volunteering in your community. I’ll start by giving a little background of my community service. In high school, I was a committee chair in my school’s chapter of key club. I was also a member of the National Honor Society which required 30 hours of community service, which I’m sure many of you are familiar with. I had many opportunities to participate in community service in high school because of these and they also gave me the insight of what defines community service. To me, community service should benefit both you and the community. That might sound cliché but it’s true. I know that to get my required 30 hours for National Honor Society, I had to do some service which I didn’t like at all. I would define this service simply as volunteer work. I didn’t really get anything out of it because I simply looked at it like something that had to get done, and because of that, I didn’t get the full experience. My community service through Key Club was much more enjoyable because I got to do things I liked and with my friends. I believe that is how community service should be to get the most out of, for all sides. You should do your service in an area you like so you also benefit from it. I don’t really have a strict definition of what community service entails. I just think it should better the community in some way you find fit. The thing I like about the service requirement in this class is that there are many different types of service available. Because of this, you can find a way to help your community in an area that interests, and hopefully benefits, you.