Service Learning Reflection
I volunteered with Ignite Norfolk and I assisted with Park Place Tutoring that they have every Friday of the month. I helped Friday November 10th and November 17th both from 2:15-4:30. As I assisted with Park Place tutoring we did many different activities on both days. So, on the 10th we stayed at Ignite and cut out little crafts that the children would create the next Friday that we would be with them. It was such a good time bonding and getting to know everybody by helping them. On November 17th that is when we visited Park Place Tutoring program. We all got assigned a different age group and was sent on us was to assist the kids with their crafts that we created. I worked with the 4th graders and they were all amazing and well mannered. I made a bond with a little guy name Jaylen who called me his girlfriend by the end of the day. After we finished the crafts we then played games such as the name game, four corners, and 7-Up with the children. Then once only Jaylen was left in the class we moved to a different class that had more kids then we did, and we played four corners. Now these kids were in 5th and 6th grade and they acted nothing like the 4th graders. They had very strong opinions and didn’t hold back one bit about what they thought. After all the children had left we then sat with everybody that had volunteered and had a Christlike discussion about how everything had gone with everybody.
Ignite’s purpose is to serve and give back the Old Dominion community that they are a part of. They help not just students but also faculty with their needs of food. The provide food with an ODU student or Faculty member that needs it. You just must provide proof of either going here or teaching here. Their mission is to spread the Word of God to people that are lost and to give people a church home away from their church home. They are here to be an inspiration and get people to become closer with God. They would like to see the work of God through the lights of other people that shine for him. They are also here to give back to people in the community any way they can.
They provide the service of the Food Pantry and the Park Place Tutoring. They address the needs of the community of the hungry and of the lost that are looking for something to fill their void which is Christ Jesus. They only want to help end college students and faculty hunger that they may experience, and they want to have more people come to Christ, so they like to minister to them about the Gospel. This helps my intended major because I would not want a newborn coming into the NICU that is malnourished and cold be possibly dying because of lack of food they received at home. I would also not want to experience anybody that doesn’t know anything about their work because they haven’t had god tutoring come their way.
I really enjoyed the service-learning because I can give back to people that are going through the same as me. I also really enjoyed working with the children because that has brightened and deepened my love for the filed that I am trying to get into. Doing the service learning has done nothing but made me happy about the community that I am helping around me. It has made me want to give bac and help more anyway I can possibly can. My values, beliefs, and morals stand strong for anybody that enjoy doing volunteer work because I am all for it! I loved doing service-learning and I can’t wait until I volunteer again. It created my relationship with God better because I was alongside people that had the same beliefs as me. So, I created me to have a bond with some people that I have been working with.
Before I started in the Fall 2017, I had already had previous experience in the nursing field when I attended Howard University for three months in the year 2015. I was in a summer enrichment program that forced me to take many classes that I would need for my major later in life and I worked alongside a Head Nurse in the Labor and Delivery Room. She allowed me to go into the rooms with her and assist both the patient and the child with any needs that needed to be met by me of course. Doing both service-learning and the summer enrichment program deepened my love for nursing because it made me realize how I enjoy seeing people happy knowing that I helped them out. I finally realized that I not only love seeing people happy, but I also enjoy creating bond with the people that I have helped to see how much they have progressed with my help. I realize that no matter what I will strive t be the best nurse out there!
Doing the service learning can relate to any major. Majors such as Exercise Science, Communications, Early Childhood Development and Psychology. I would pursue many of these majors as m parallel major because they are all ways that you cannot just give back, but you can also help people in the process of giving back to them and the community. I would also pursue any of these majors because you can world with children with any of these majors and can help them and their parents with any issues they may be going through now. I can potentially purse these majors because it is a form of helping people that are in need. I then would not pursue these because many of these majors are not in the medical field and I see myself assisting in the medical field.