Giving help where it is needed

On Wednesday, January 14th, I visited the organization, CAMBA, which was a MICA (Mentally Ill Chronically Addicted) women's shelter. This particular shelter housed about 100 women who were in the transitional phase of moving into affordable housing. Throughout the orientation, I learned an enormous amount of information on the process of getting off the streets and into affordable housing; such as, being compliant with the case worker, obtaining a social security number if needed, helping complete job application forms, and providing basic resources. I did not realize the amount of work and effort CAMBA puts into their goal of trying to jump-start the lives of many of women by finding them jobs and affordable housing.

This experience was different than the previous ones in the week in terms of our role of service to the organization. We completed more "behind the scenes" tasks such as taking down Christmas lights, moving books and paint, and cleaning out the basement. Even though we didn't have a direct effect on the women in the shelter, we were able to serve CAMBA by helping them organize and free up their time. It is important to understand your role in service for different organizations and realize that helping them in anyway is serving, even though it might have felt like free labor in today's situation. 

 CAMBA talked about how they work with the clients in order to get them back on the right track. This experience made me feel more positive and appreciative of the indirect service that people do. Service doesn't always need to be visible to the public, such as helping at a soup kitchen or rebuilding a house, but rather the things we complete that are not seen can often be some of the most important services. At first, it was hard to grasp that I wasn't directly helping the women in the shelter, but as time went on, I realized that what I was doing was benefiting the organization the most at that particular time. As you can see, I brought inaccurate assumptions to this site, and I quickly realized that I should shed that mindset very quickly. During this experience, I realized my strength of following direction and figuring out the most efficient way to complete the task. While taking down Christmas lights, I was given a tall ladder and was able to develop an efficient system for unraveling the lights from the tree and dropping them down to another volunteer to be put away. This system was a particular reason for why I had no trouble working with the other volunteers in our group because we each knew our role in the task. This collaborative effort allowed us to completely take down lights from 2 densely packed trees. My leadership skills were developed in this effort by taking an initiative to be on the ladder and control the pace of the task.

After my service experience at CAMBA, I learned many things about how to be an effective servant. First, I learned not to question the organization's role for you in service. We may not have been on the "front lines" directly helping those in need, but we were important in the fact of supporting CAMBA's mission and goals. Also, I learned that determining an efficient system will benefit and maximize your use in the service project. We created a miniature assembly line when storing books in the basement and cleaning up the paint room. In addition, I learned that bringing a positive attitude to any situation will not only benefit yourself, but it also will assist the organization. Listening to others and thinking about what I was doing is how I learned all of these important lessons. These lessons matter because they impact your life and the future service that you may do. If I can spread what I learned during this trip, I will have a great impact on those that surround me.

Overall, this was a great service experience to make you realize that not all service is going to be directly helping those in need. The "behind the scenes" services are just as important and critical to help the many organizations that are targeting the poor. Be appreciative of whatever you may be assigned to complete, and know that it is helping a greater cause.

-- Nate Zimmermann