Reflective Essay On Growing Ground

I spent my 10 volunteering hours for the Service Learning Project at Growing Grounds. Growing Grounds is a place where people with mental health issues can go to work and learn group skills such as teamwork, communication, etcetera. At Growing Grounds they are trying to get rid of the mental health stigma while giving the workers a better chance in the world. During my time volunteering I did a variety of different jobs, like planting, setting up orders, delivering orders, weeding, watering, and tagging plants. All of this was done working side-by-side with the workers and other volunteers.
The experience that affected me the most was hearing the story of one of the workers. I was, and I still am amazed about how they are still going today. …show more content…
But there are a few concepts we learned about that I could connect to. Naturalistic vs. Personalistic medicine was an important one. Yes some of the workers, if not most needed to be on medication to function, but that was not the reason they were happy or working hard. They were happy because of Growing Grounds giving them a chance. They had somewhere to go where it was possible to make a little bit of money and have self worth. No medicine prescribed by doctors can do that for someone, so I believe the therapy of Growing Grounds was a Personalistic style of medicine. And then when the two styles of medicines are brought together is when the best recovery occurs. Another concept I connected from class was how once someone has been put at the bottom of the social ladder how hard it is to work their way back up. These people have been excluded from society because of their mental health, and they would still be excluded today if not for Growing Grounds. Growing Grounds was the one reaching back to these people, helping them along. And maybe that is all these people need. Someone to help