Answer the question in two paragraphs. The first student in the class to fully answer the question will receive a free absence.
Have a great weekend.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Week 11.3
As Winne points out, certain kinds of philanthropy continue because donors, whether corporations, organizations, or individuals, gain some benefit such as good public relations or even just feeling good. Write about an experience of volunteering, even if it was only an act of helping a stranger. Has this experience affected the way you feel about philanthropy? Public services? Also, how has reading this opinion essay influenced the way you view Thanksgiving food drives? Has it gotten you to change your view entirely? Has it at least gotten you to think a little differently? Why or why not?
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I once volunteered with my basketball team at a home for children with a single mother. These women had been raped or their husbands had left them. About a week before Christmas, we gathered all the kids and made crafts, played games, and made our own calzones. After it was all over, I felt really good. Like most people would, I hope. I could tell the kids had a great time and a chance to do something they never could.
ReplyDeleteI think reading this essay made me feel different about food drives, but not the type of volunteering I did. Food is a perishable. We were just trying to give the kids some holiday joy. I think, as a volunteer, you could feel better by giving someone something to remember as one of the best days of their life. With a food bank, its just a bunch of people in line getting food. There is no relation between the volunteer and the person getting assisstance. I agree with Winne though. We need to find the answer to preventing people to come to food drives, not expand our food drives.
When I was in high school I had the opportunity to help coach a 7-8 year old cheerleading team. This was volunteer work and I did not get paid for it. I loved working with the girls and helping them to learn new skills. It was a great feeling when one of the girls got a new skill and could do it all on their own. It made me feel accomplished and I liked being that person that could help them succeed. It was a great experience I went through and would do it again if I had the chance.
ReplyDeleteI think that reading this essay did make me think about food drives is a different way. I’m sure people feel good about helping out at food drives and think it’s such a great cause. When really, all they are doing is giving food and not putting their heart into their volunteering. When I volunteered at the cheerleading gym, I knew I was making a difference in the girl’s lives. They would take what they learned and keep going with it to reach a harder skill. I put my heart into helping those girls and feel they got a lot out of me helping them. I feel like the Thanksgiving food drives are a good cause, but only to a certain point. We should focus on trying to get people not to come to the food drives and only relying on those for their Thanksgiving meal.
My philanthropic experience, several years ago, was not what I expected. During the Thanks Giving Holiday that year, my ex-husband volunteered my services to his A.A. group, to cook a Thanks Giving dinner to about 50 people. I suppose I could of said no, since I was working about 65 hours a week at my job back then, but I did not. So, I guess I volunteered in a round-about way. I used the churches kitchen, and my own, to cook a feast befitting the most well-to-do of families.I expected others to lend a hand, but was sorely disappointed. It was a lot of hard work on my part, but I was happy to think that it would be much appreciated by those less fortunate. Everyone was certainly happy when I served them, but not one person bothered to say thank you. No appreciation. This showed me that they needed a helping hand, but also that they expected it, and therfore,felt no need to show to proclaim any appreciation. It left me with a feeling of being used. I did not volunteer to help in the following years.
ReplyDeleteWinnie's essay was more of an affirmation of my suspicions about what people need, and what they expect. I do agree that no-one should go hungry in this country but, motivation to rise above poverty is not to be found at food banks. Neither do I think that it's the governments job to give a never ending supply of help to people who do not want to enrich their lives. Unlike Winnie, I believe the system needs to focus on training people to enter the job market, and to inspire them to raise their expectations, to rise above poverty. I am not ashamed to say that I have been there, but I made the consious effort to succeed, and rise above. My fate is not the cards that I was dealt, but what I made of them. There is always a choice!
In high school, we were required to do 20 hours of community service. I decided to do most of my hours at the Boulder Food Bank, packing foods into boxes, organizing the canned foods, and stocking the shelves. I felt obligated to help after I saw the huge line of people waiting outside to get food the first time that I went there. I met other volunteers that also were doing community service work to get their hours done but also talked to people there that volunteered every week. I asked them why they wanted to go there so often and they said because at one point in their lives they were getting food from this same food bank and now that they were steady on their feet, they felt like it was a good cause and it really helps out a large amount of people. Thanksgiving meals can cost a lot of money, especially if you have a big family and not everyone has enough money to pay for it. I still think food drives help people that are in need and they are helpful for those people to save their money instead of buying food every week, but they aren't helping decrease poverty. If food drives had strict requirements and actually did background checks, they would still help those that need food and stop people that are just there to get free food.
ReplyDeleteIn high school I was in National Honor Society, to be in this you had to have a certain grade point average and do at least twenty hours of community service. By being in NHS it helped me see that there are many ways that you can find to help out in your community. I have helped with many eye opening experiences that I would not have been able to help with, or know about if I was not in NHS. One of the most eye opening experiences was working at Emily Keys. This was a motorcycle ride that started at my high school and ended at Platte Canyon High School. This experience showed me how a community can come together in a time of need and raise money for an important foundation.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading this essay I felt that my views on Thanksgiving food drives, it gave me great background information on it that I would not have known with out reading it. I have always felt that the food drives were very important; they are bringing people together to help other people in need. By reading this essay it got me thinking about how we can find a way to not have everyone relying on food drives. In his essay he talked about how people know that food banks are there so they are not trying to find a different way to get food because they know it will always be there. I still think that we should have food banks just find a way to use them were everyone is not just relying on them all the time.
I once volunteered for a church project. One summer a group of teenagers went to Arizona for a week and we taught bible study classes for free. Many parents took up on the offer, seeing it as free daycare. We had to plan for this bible study months before we came. We had to make lesson plans and all that. SO we volunteeres 2 hours a week 2 months in advance. When we went to Arizona, it was a blast. I enjoyed teaching the kids. It made me feel good because alot of the children would hang on me and want to play with me.
ReplyDeleteWinnes essay gave me background information I did not know about Thanksgiving food drives. However I already knew that their are people out there who need help, and who need food provided for them. SO his essay really did change my opinion or the way I think about food drives, it just informed me on more infomation I did not know.
My Junior year in high school I had to come up with a way to help the community for my teaching class. Well my partner and I decided to do something for the nursing homes over the Christmas holiday. We thought about how many people in these homes don't always have visitors over the holiday. So we went to an elementary school and had two second grade classrooms make decorations, cards and paper trees so we could go decorate a nursing home. The look on some of the peoples faces when we put up these decorations will foreve stay with me, you could tell how happy they were.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this essay it did change my veiws a little bit. I don't think they are bad or should stop but I do think there needs to be a different approach to everything. In order to change what's happening we need to do more than just give them food and send them on their way.
Last year for my FCCLA club I volunteered at the Air Force Academy Child Development Center/Daycare with a group of girls and helped out with their “Fall Festival.” We helped out with a bunch of different things, like face painting, a mini cake walk, and many craft projects. The families of the children and their teachers were all very grateful for our help and the time we put into making the festival a fun and safe place. It showed me how important it was to military parents that their children were being cared for while they had to work sometimes long and busy hours. Volunteering at the festival allowed me to work on my teaching skills, but also allowed me to do something helpful and fun in my community and for the hard working military families of the Academy.
ReplyDeleteThis essay gave me a lot more background on Thanksgiving food drives and allowed me to understand what goes into them better than before. It got me to think more critically about whether food drives are a beneficial thing, or if they are more harm than good. It makes me think that there might be a bigger problem to fix because of the author’s points regarding poverty and how it affects food banks and hunger rates.
A few summers ago, I went on a mission trip to New York with my church. We heled out a couple of different groups and orginizations but one really stood out for me. We went to a place where teenagers who had been kicked out of their houses were put and were able to have a place to stay. I think this really stood out for me because while I was there, I got to talk to kids who were my age and how different of a life I had from them. We were able to cook and have dinner with them and interact the whole day. After going there, I don't know if I felt better about myself or glad that I helped; I just felt really thankful for all that I had. I felt good about talking with them and giving them peole that they could talk to, but did not have that feeling that Winne described.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Winne's essay, I felt a little different about how people really help. I do believe that people in food drives and soup kitchens need help, but I believe that we can help them in more benificial ways then just donating food. The more people who realize they can get by through life not having to work the more peopole are going to try to not succeed in life and just get thigs given to them. I think that he made good points about helping in more ways than just giving food. I don't believe we should stop giviing food that is needed to some, but I think that a lot of the people can benifit and learn from working for what they want and need. We need to do more than just giving food away; we need to make life changes in those who need it.
In high school during my first three years I was a cheerleader. As a cheerleader we were required to to a lot of community service. One of the volunteer things that we did was working at the OUR Center. The OUR center is a place that collects non perishable food items and gives them to families in need. We went around neighborhoods and had cans collected at our school and at the end of December we went and delivered all the food to the OUR Center. Doing this made me feel really good about myself. I was helping people that were less fortunate and even though it had been hard work it was well worth it. I felt good because I was helping people that sometimes had trouble helping themselves.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this essay it did change my views. I don't think per say that they are bad or should stop what they are doing. But instead I think that there needs to be a different way to approach this issue. In order to change what has been happening we need to do more than just send food in the less fortuanates direction, and actually help them to help themselves
Every year my family and I donate clothes to people that need them. I think Thanksgiving food drives a benefical and help the people in need. Even if people abuse them guilt probably runs through their minds eating food that people that actually need. It feels good to help people when not forced. If you have to do it for school you dont get the same feeling afterwards.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the essay I felt people should try harder on feeding the needy. The gap will only get wider between the rich and the poor if no one really tries to fix it. There could be better ways on fixing the problem but they havent been discovered yet. In order to change there has to be a country wide help.
For the past seven years I have volunteered for and organization called Operation Christmas Child. People around the country put together shoe boxes full of toys, candy, clothes, and other little objects. These boxes are then sent around the world to kids in 3rd world countries who wouldn't otherwise get a christmas gift. What I do is go to a huge warehouse and look through the boxes to make sure there is nothing inapropriate in them. It is really cool that I'm the last one to touch the box before the kids get them.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the essay, my views have not changed very much. I still believe there are great organizations that help those who really need it. Others definitely have the right mindset, but may be over helping those that don't need that much help. Sometimes that's what I think about food drives. Only those who really need it should be able to use it. I still believe it is a great thing to volunteer and help others.
During my senior year, I spent a large amount of my free time volunteering at an elementary school in my neighborhood. I would help relieve the teacher’s work load by working with students, setting up projects, or organizing papers for the teachers. Although I wasn’t paid, I loved going there! It was great being in an environment where teachers were passionate about their jobs, and students were eager to learn. This experience ultimately influenced my decision to become an elementary school teacher, and taught me a lot about the occupation.
ReplyDeletePrior to reading Winne’s essay concerning food banks, I had known little about the extent of work or volunteers went into them. The author informed me about the controversial topic of food drives and gave me reason to reconsider my assumption that they were helping the poverty dilemma. His support for his stance regarding the fact that individuals have become too reliant on food banks certainly makes me think more about my stance on the subject; however, it doesn’t completely give me cause to change my opinion. Overall, his essay is informative; but the writing doesn’t persuade me.
I did a lot of volunteer work during middle and high school. At first it was only because it was a required piece of the curriculum, but over time I began to truly appreciate and enjoy the experiences, and they are now the source of some of my most fond memories. Coming from those experiences, I know that sometimes philanthropy exists simply because of the benefits to the individual, but at other times people do charitable things simply because it is right and they truly want to help. This essay has definitely effected how I feel about donating food, but I don’t intend to stop giving food because even if the overall goal needs to shift towards ending poverty, hunger does still exist and ending food banks will not stop it.
ReplyDeleteThis one year, my mom, siblings and I went to a Christmas volunteering program. The jobs at the place were either to hand out food, give out presents or cheer for the people who walked into the building. My family and I stood in a hallway cheering for the less fortunate people; I thought this was a horrible way of volunteering. I am sure it just made the people feel awkward, and I ended up not feeling better about myself. I feel at times public services aren’t doing what really needs to be done; instead they mainly focus on what looks good not what actually helps people out. This essay has changed my opinion on Thanksgiving drive, I have always thought that something needs to be done to actually fix the problem, but people continuously just try to resolve the problem for that day. The food drives solve the problem for one day but never really solve the true problem.
ReplyDeleteMy friends and I picked about 750 pumpkins for a bunch of elementary kids so that they can have a pumpkin to carve for Halloween. It took us hours to complete the task and we had to pick smaller ones for preschoolers and bigger ones for the older kids. Even though the kids didn't necessarily need pumpkins it still felt good to do something nice for the children.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading Winne's essay, it made me think about donating in a different percpective. I think donating is a good idea and if we can help others then we should, but I don't think that things should be given to the needy constantly just so that we can make ourselves feel good and responsible. I'm not sure what we should do, but there has to be another way to approach this. We are encouraging poverty and if they don't learn how to dig themselves out of the cycle then they won't want to know how. "'The more you provide, the more demand there is'" (491). Even though we think we are doing a good thing by donating food we are actually reinforcing the problem. It's like the common saying give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. We should teach them the right skills to make the right choices so that they can succeed.
When I was in 7th grade I volunteered at a homeless shelter that my aunt worked at serving food. At first I just said yes to be nice and have something to do, but when I showed up it changed right away. Just seeing how many people were there made me realize how big of a problem it was. It made me have more sympathy for this part of society, seeing what was going on. There were rules that I had to follow when serving too, for instance I could only give each person a certain amount of food which I can understand, but at the end there was so much left over. Instead of saving it they just threw it out. So in my eyes whats an extra scoop here and there if its going to get thrown out anyways. It made me get into it and have a lot of questions. When it comes to other types of food drives, I feel like its the right thing to do
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