Service Learning Project

I chose to volunteer at Our Daily Bread which is a local charity organization that collects food and prepares meals for the unfortunate Monday through Friday. During my service there I did many things such as wash and prepare fruits and vegetables that we used in the meal we made for that day. When it was time to serve them I couldn’t help but notice that the people I was working with were adopting the Christian Marxian ideal presented by Hardin. They were being “a brother’s keeper” by trying to help every last one of those needy people into our lifeboat. While this is a very generous act that this organization provides, I don’t necessarily see it as the best solution, it is just a temporary fix. If they keep taking in more people their lifeboat will eventually sink just like Hardin suggests. He says it “sounds nice, but…good intentions are no substitute for good performance”. Our Daily Bread needs to “teach these men how to fish” instead of just “giving them a fish”. While I was serving the needy I realized that there was a dramatic increase in the number of people there versus the last time I volunteered, which was about a year ago. This was depressing to me because our country is always so quick to help out other countries in need rather than fix or solve our own problems first. In the 12 Myths reading by Holly Poole-Kavana the tenth myth brings this issue up. According to Poole-Kavana all of our aid goes to foreign entities to support things like free trade and free market, instead of being used to clothe and feed our hungry here in the U.S. After they finished eating their lunch I helped wash all of the dishes (they use dishes instead of Styrofoam and plastics to help out the environment and the help keep a count of how many people they serve). Some of the needy people stayed there the entire time while others ate and left. After all of my duties were done I decided to mingle around with them. I was even invited to play a game of checkers, which I lost. After volunteering, I was even motivated to volunteer to work their charity booth selling some of their guest’s artwork at the Arts and Jazz Festival, however it was rained out. I do intend to volunteer in the kitchen again on Fridays though.

All in all my overall experience volunteering at Our Daily Bread was very eye-opening. I was able to see just how little some people have and how lucky I am. This class helped me realize that hunger and starvation is still a very big issue not just in our country, but also in other countries all over the world and we need to address it, fast. After all, “Food is our most basic need, the very stuff of life” (Shiva pg. 5). To deny someone of that necessity when you have it to give is cruel.