Volunteering

Day 1: Pose For The Camera

Today was a very interesting and tiring day. It was also my first day volunteering for the organization Planned Parenthood. A group of friends and I attended an event hosted by the organization. At the event we were asked to sit on stage and pose for photo ops while different candidates such as Shirley Weber, Todd Gloria, Sandra Fluke, and Bob Filner gave speeches as to why they should be elected for their different positions. Us students basically sat behind the speakers in out Planned Parenthood shirts so that the news and media could see that teens also supported the candidates and also the organization. It was a very interesting experience. The goal of the organization is to help and also inform people about the safe sex and many other things. I think by going to this event, we helped this goal in some way.

Hours: 3
Total: 3/40


Day 2: Hello, May I Speak With?
This morning I volunteered for Planned Parenthood. Today we did phone banking. What we did was called various people and informed them about the upcoming mayoral election and tried to persude women to vote for Bob Filner and not Carl DeMaio who does not support the decisions that Planned Parenthood makes. It was a nervous experience because it was a little scary to call random people and ask them who they were going to vote for. At the end of the day, I was proud of myself for doing it, and I actually got many people to commit to voting for Bob Filner. The other people who were phone banking were nice people. They were a little older, but they helped me so that I could feel more comfortable reading the script and calling the different people. When we were done phonebanking we had a debrief where we talked about how many people hung up on us or were just rude when we called. All in all it was a fun experience.

Hours:3
Total: 6/40

Day 3: Integrity Checkin'

Tonight I volunteered at Feeding America-San Diego. There were a lot of different task that you could pick from and myself along with my sister, decided to be Integrity Checkers. I was honestly very excited to do this job. I like checking to make sure details are right. With this job, we unloaded boxes and checked the food packages to insure that they are good enough to be given out to families. It was a pretty boring job, but I made the most of it. I did not take my integrity checking job lightly. I checked every single that I came into contact with and I made sure I checked every inch of the product. Some of the other volunteers laughed at me because I was so serious, but I didn't mind. It was actually a lot of fun. In one of the other volunteers boxes there was a mouse. I was in a room with adults over the age of 20 and they were all afraid to touch the box, except me. However, they wouldn't let me touch the box since I'm a girl. I ended up having a very fun volunteer experience there.

Hours:3
Total: 9/40

Day 4: Away With The Nasty Fruit

Tonight I went back and volunteeres at Feeding America-San Diego. This time I was not an integrity checker. Instead I picked through good and bad fruit. It was a very disgusting job. I've never seen so many rotten apples and oranges in my life. It was such a different job from being an intergrity checker. I had to sort through about three huge bins of apples, rotten and not. The rottens ones were thrown into a seperate bin and those bins were then cleaned. That was such a sight a to see! And the smell was pretty bad. I'm glad that I was able to sort through the fruit to find good clean fruit that can now be delivered to schools and families. It was a mission accomplished.

Hours: 3
Total: 12/40

Day 5: Church Cleaning
Today was a long and exhausting day. I volunteered at Greater Trinity Church and I cleaned. I cleaned all the pews in the old and new sanctuary. I went through two and a half bottles of pledge and about 5 rags. I hope that everyone appreciates how clean they are. They were cleaned from top to bottom and the whole chuch smells of lemon pledge. But I didn't mind cleaning. I had my friend there to help and we listened to music while we cleaned and we happened to make it fun. I got my hours and I'm very happy about that.

Hours: 4
Total: 16/40

Day 6: Children Drive Me Crazy
I love kids, but after today I'm not sure if I still feel that way. At the church there are three services. I volunteered at Children's Church for all three services. It was hectic. My morning was filled with crying, screaming , laughing , and talking which sounded a lot like gibberish. A lot of it was actually fun to be honest. The kids were a fun and a joy to be around. At the end of the day, I was pretty drained. All the different children I watched burned out all my energy. It was a fun experience. I even got a drawing from a little boy which made my day.

Hours: 6
Total: 22/40

Day 7: Church! Church! Church!

Sundays are very long days. Rewarding, but very long. Today I spent the whole day at church. I helped with the Children's Church again, but instead I helped with the slighly older kids. It was interesting to hear their theories about God and how we got here. It's much better than being with the babies who can't talk or walk yet. When they services were over I came back to church for the church musical. I helped make the programs and made sure that everything and everyone was ready and knew what they were supposed to do. It was nice seeing the musical go from just an idea to actually happening. It was very fun to watch and take part in.

Hours: 9
Total: 31/40

Day 8: Feeding The Homeless
      This morning I went downtown and feed the homeless. A group of friends and I made around 100 sandwiches. We also had chocolate and lollipops to give out. It was a lot of fun, but it was very tiring. The people seemed to like the food. We made both turkey/ham sandwiches and peanut butter and jelly. We walked up and down the streer. We ended up standing in front of St. Vincent De Paul and handing out candy. Some of the people were a little picky and sort of angry because we ran out of peanut butter and jelly. Overall it was a good day and I liked seeing the smiles on their faces. I'm glad I made someone smile that day.

Hours: 5
Total: 36/40