Service Project After going back and forth with myself about where to do my community service project, I decided to do it at St. Mary’s Towers in Long Beach. St. Mary’s Towers is a senior citizens building, with 148 individual one bedroom apartments that are available to low income and disabled seniors. The building is owned by The Retirement Housing Foundation. RHF was founded in 1961 by two United Church of Christ clergy and a layman with a vision of providing quality housing and services for seniors. While RHF began with a mission to provide affordable housing for seniors, it has expanded to include affordable housing for low-income families and persons with disabilities. The building has on-site managers, a social worker, computers,
…show more content…
My mother lives next door to the building and I often see the residents come back and forth when I’m visiting her. There are a few residents that my family and I know by name. There has been times when my son has helped a few of the residents with their grocery or carrying heavy items. Some of the elderly that live in this building have spouses and some do not. Some have families that come and visit them regularly, and some resident don’t have any family at all. There are also some residents that do have families but rarely gets visits from them. Every year for special days, the management teams comes together to prepare a dinner or special activity for the residents in the building to enjoy. They do this to try to help them feel good about themselves, show them someone cares, and uplift their spirits. This year they were going to serve all the residents a special Mother’s Day dinner and give small gifts to all the female residents who had children. I thought this would be a great place to do my service project, and I enjoyed helping with the Mother’s Day dinner and the people were really nice. Next I will talk about some of the things I noticed …show more content…
It was not part of their job description to serve the residents dinner for Mother’s Day. They came in on their day off and did not expect to be financially compensated. These employees used their personal time to collect donations and donated money of their own to make it happen. The preparation for this occasion started months ago. We also ran around for two hours Saturday night making sure we did our list minute errands and making sure we had everything we needed for the dinner. It’s was not an easy task to prepare food and feed 148 tenants, plus the staff, but they all came together and we did it willfully without complaining. The staff at St. Mary’s tower did not have this dinner to get recognition from their boss or company, or to earn a raise; they were servants because of their compassion for the people they provided service to. Matthew 6:2-4 teaches us, “So whenever you give alms, do no sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward…,” (Matthew 6:2-4 New Revised Standard Version). The happiness we saw on the tenants face was our reward. It made me feel good inside and made me feel like this was more than just six hours of community service. You could see that they appreciated the dinner and activities that
My mother lives next door to the building and I often see the residents come back and forth when I’m visiting her. There are a few residents that my family and I know by name. There has been times when my son has helped a few of the residents with their grocery or carrying heavy items. Some of the elderly that live in this building have spouses and some do not. Some have families that come and visit them regularly, and some resident don’t have any family at all. There are also some residents that do have families but rarely gets visits from them. Every year for special days, the management teams comes together to prepare a dinner or special activity for the residents in the building to enjoy. They do this to try to help them feel good about themselves, show them someone cares, and uplift their spirits. This year they were going to serve all the residents a special Mother’s Day dinner and give small gifts to all the female residents who had children. I thought this would be a great place to do my service project, and I enjoyed helping with the Mother’s Day dinner and the people were really nice. Next I will talk about some of the things I noticed …show more content…
It was not part of their job description to serve the residents dinner for Mother’s Day. They came in on their day off and did not expect to be financially compensated. These employees used their personal time to collect donations and donated money of their own to make it happen. The preparation for this occasion started months ago. We also ran around for two hours Saturday night making sure we did our list minute errands and making sure we had everything we needed for the dinner. It’s was not an easy task to prepare food and feed 148 tenants, plus the staff, but they all came together and we did it willfully without complaining. The staff at St. Mary’s tower did not have this dinner to get recognition from their boss or company, or to earn a raise; they were servants because of their compassion for the people they provided service to. Matthew 6:2-4 teaches us, “So whenever you give alms, do no sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward…,” (Matthew 6:2-4 New Revised Standard Version). The happiness we saw on the tenants face was our reward. It made me feel good inside and made me feel like this was more than just six hours of community service. You could see that they appreciated the dinner and activities that