Volunteer Experience Paper

During my two volunteer experiences I participated in for the service learning portion of this class, I had the opportunity to witness many different walks of life. I was taken in on a side of poverty I’ve never before seen, and on a very intimate level. My first volunteer experience this semester was at a local food pantry, the Pratt-Quigley center. The neighborhood around the food pantry seemed very run down and poor. Shortly after arriving there, we were directed to the room where all the food was stored after it had been donated, waiting to be sorted. We were shown where everything needed to go, and we spent about two hours sorting cans by flavor and every other food by category. Although we weren’t allowed to go into the store section, …show more content…
We asked to work in the resale shop, but were told we would need more training to work hands-on with the customers, and that the real help was needed where we were. I was able to see some of the types of people that were in the resale shop as we walked to and from different parts of the building, as well as the types of cars they drove as I left at the end of my shift.
In class we learned about a lot of different topics that tied in to my volunteering experience, and I’ll try to touch on each of them. For example, in class we learned about poverty in major cities (such as Indianapolis) being a very prevalent problem, and I was able to see inner city poverty first hand at the food pantry. A lot of people rode the bus there, and arrived wearing very tattered clothes. Many of them were disabled, and were clearly living in poverty. We learned about people abusing the welfare/food stamp system in my readings for class, and although I didn’t get to see that first hand, I was able to see people who seemed very well off at distribution center getting discounted appliances. They showed up very well dressed