Service Learning: Reflection on Helping Others

Service to others has always been a priority in my life, and I started helping others in my community at a young age. I enjoy helping others and using my time to positively impact someone’s life. One of the components of this J-Term experience that caught my eye was the element of community-based learning that was integrated into the program. Volunteering at Actiyam allowed me to expand my horizons by helping a new community and developing relationships that I otherwise never would have had the opportunity to create.

We volunteered at Actiyam, which is an NGO in Valencia. Throughout our four weeks of volunteering, we were assigned various tasks to complete each day. Each day we made sandwiches and gave these sandwiches to the homeless living on the streets of the city, as pictured in the middle photo above. We completed two craft projects to promote recycling and the prevention of trash ending up in the sea. These projects included a mural of dolphins using bottle caps and a three-dimensional model of a whale. Aside from these larger projects, we also completed small tasks some days, such as purchasing and potting small plants to decorate the NGO, playing games with the other volunteers, and completing mock interviews with the other volunteers to prepare them to enter the workforce.

The group completed with other volunteers a little "fallita" to be used during the big local March festivities in Valencia: Las Fallas.

At first, I was frustrated with some of the tasks assigned to us, such as playing board games with the other volunteers, because I thought that these tasks were not very impactful on the community and that I could be using my skills and time in a more influential and useful way. I enjoyed handing out sandwiches in the community because I could directly see how my actions positively impacted the life of a person in need within the community. These people were so grateful when we handed them sandwiches and it gave me a sense of pride that such a small action of mine could make a great influence on another person. Aside from handing out sandwiches, I initially could not see how my actions were impacting the community. I believed that I could be using my time in a much more productive way, rather than doing arts and crafts. These projects, however, were much more than just arts and crafts. What I didn’t realize was that many of these activities were teambuilding activities, with a goal of creating relationships between the Gustavus students and the other volunteers at Actiyam.

I initially overlooked that I may be having a greater impact on the members of the Valencian community than I originally believed. I realized that working at Actiyam allowed me to be a positive role model and to create healthy relationships with the volunteers that are native to Valencia. The volunteers we worked with were outsiders within the community and were at risk of social exclusion. By including these volunteers in the activities completed by us Gustavus students, we were helping these people find a sense of belonging and self worth, while also keeping them out of trouble and off the streets. Teaching these volunteers about community and how to work together was great, and I feel that we taught these people a lot and had a significant impact on their lives. These volunteers, however, had a significant impact on my life as well.

I am the type of person who always needs to be kept busy and needs to feel that in order to be productive, I must always be doing something. We had a lot of down time at Actiyam when we were between projects which I struggled with at first. This downtime, however, was the time that I got to know the other volunteers the best. We would communicate in Spanish and they would tell me about their lives, and I found that these volunteers and myself were more alike than I ever would have imagined. At first glance, they all seemed vastly different from me because they didn’t go to college and they spoke another language. The thing that brought us together, however, was our common love for service to the community.

Volunteering at Actiyam impacted my life more than I ever thought to be possible. This experience taught me to be more open minded, patient, and empathetic to those experiencing social exclusion. The concept of social exclusion is something that is difficult to view as a bystander, and this experience at Actiyam opened my eyes to be more accepting of others and to be inclusive of people who may not have found their purpose in life quite yet. The relationships created through my experience at Actiyam are something that I will cherish forever, because these relationships were created through the common love of service.