Analysis

          My first community service experience went relatively well I think. I went to St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance at the corner of 31^st avenue and Thomas road. I was at the warehouse and give the food away part of the St. Mary’s. While there I unpacked boxes of food, bagged small food items like lemons and limes, garlic and onions, and bags of crackers. I also packed shopping carts full of food and “ran” them for the “customers” and helped put the food in either their overstuffed cars or their backpacks. I also broke down tons of boxes, swept and cleaned the floors. I also got to throw away some very rancid food that was pretty close to making me and everyone else throw up where we stood. The best part of my whole experience was seeing the people who needed the help and that every time a person got their basket of food their face lit up like a little child who just got a brand new bike Christmas morning but then saw the ps3 next to it and was so excited they were actually silent for a few seconds. Seeing the people with that face made all the manual labor worth it and actually made me feel like what I was doing was making a difference in these people’s lives and that was enough to make me keep smiling while doing the volunteer work.

          Through this civic service work I was able to feel like I was helping the people who need the help the most. These people waited and waited for some (barely) edible food but took it like it was an entire feast and they would never get more food again.  For these people to take what are pretty much the leftovers and some donated food and be grateful for it really affects one’s view on society. Most people believe that all the donations and welfare have a negative effect on society and its prosperity but if they do then they have never volunteered at a ghetto food distribution place and saw all these people who would starve and die without the little bit of sympathy they get from everyone else in society in the form of food and water. The effects of welfare and food banks on society are much more positive than we can probably imagine, most of us have never lived off donations or waited hours for a shopping cart of food that we could easily fill over twice at a cost co or Wal-Mart with food 10 times better than the food they get. Even though we believe it hurts us and our society donate and pay for these people on welfare through taxes, it really does help almost everyone of the people who need it and by helping them it increases the chances that one day they will be able to give back to society.

Civic Duty

          Through-out our lives as Americans we encounter a myriad of different situations in which we could help out someone improve their lives or even just give them the courage to live for another day.  This act of random kindness has been called hundreds of different names but one people seem to forget is civic duty. Civic duty “is the responsibility of a citizen” (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/civic+duty) to help and better the lives of himself, family members and other citizens, or as John D. Rockefeller Jr. once said “We must instill a sense of duty in our children"; "every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty” (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/civic+duty). For Americans civic duty is fundamental to our way of life. Our country was founded on the idea of helping one other and obeying the law. Every day Americans forget or try to avoid their duty to U.S. simply by not voting or voting unwisely. “Being an American citizen carries with it a number of duties and responsibilities, chief of which is active participation in the democratic process.”(Duties of American Citizenship: Responsibilities Include Voting, Jury Duty, and Paying Taxes http://www.suite101.com/content/duties-of-american-citizenship-a162858#ixzz171WiIV1R). In society today our voter turnouts are quite low and rarely above 60% of the total eligible voting population which was “231,229,580” “in 2008 with a voter turnout of 56.8%”  (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html). The low turnout for voting is proof that in America the sense of duty is diminishing from our way of life and that Americans no longer see the need to make our country better. Civic duty was extremely important to our forefathers and they believed that everyone can and should help their country. When James Wilson said “Let no one, therefore harbour, for a moment, the mean idea, that he is and can be of no value to his country” (http://www.nccs.net/articles/ril67.html) he created the base foundations for our nation’s citizens in hope that everyone would participate in the democratic process and never shirk off our duty to our country. That is the core of civic duty. Our duty to our nation, it’s people and it’s freedom for everyone.

Bibliography:

Copyright © 2010 Farlex, Inc.   http://www.thefreedictionary.com/civic+duty

Oct 26, 2009 Michael Streich : Duties of American Citizenship: Responsibilities Include Voting, Jury Duty, and Paying Taxes http://www.suite101.com/content/duties-of-american-citizenship-a162858#ixzz171WiIV1R

  Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part VII:  ISBN 0-937047-01-5  http://www.nccs.net/articles/ril67.html

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Also from the above site ^ that one an awsome qoute from Thomas Jefferson "Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature."  (Letter to Edward Carrington January 16, 1787) 

Pictures



Breaking down food boxes;

 So more can be unpacked and stacked together without people tripping over them.



A very large box of bagged crackers.
Just one of the many tasks that had to be done while working here





Yet even more box breaking,

after several hours of this,

 even seeing the poor people made me feel good 



Our very special volunteer badge.
It even shows how we gave to the needy. (:

I think I was ready to just torch all the boxes.

Literally we went throw about 600 boxes of different food in just 4 hours





Community Service Narritve

            For my community service project I volunteered at a warehouse, food donating, ghetto neighborhood place, called St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance. For the majority of my hours I unpacked hundreds of pounds of food varying from apples to zucchinis. This must the most laborious part of the job and the least interactive with the actual needy citizens of the neighborhood, but being underhanded most of the time they needed as much help as they could getting all the food situated and ready to be brought out to the people in need. For the other part of my community service hours I was taking the actual shopping carts of food out to the needy people and following them to wherever they were either parked (with about 7 people in a 5 person car) or just out to where they shoved it all in a backpack and just left. It was a very exhausting running back and forth between taking food to the needy people and going back to unpack the food or even help clean the place up so no one would hurt themselves and so it wouldn’t start to stink; since every now and then there was some very horrible stenches that come from the bad food needed to be thrown out or half of the volunteers would have shown us their lunches in liquid form. At the end of the day I felt good knowing that these people were getting something to eat that is decently edible instead of begging and looking through trashcans.