Finding Myself in the Service of Others
Lindsey Paul
Ms. Nero
ENG 1113
24 June 2014
Finding Myself in the Service of Others I realized the world was evolving when I went on a trip to New York City with my former high school classmates. The amount of homeless people on the streets in Times Square blew my mind. It made me feel very fortunate for the life that I have. When it was time to go home, my best friend and I came up with an idea for a club at our school. We teamed up and started a club called FCCLA. It stands for Family Career and Community Leaders of America. It was a community service based club. It gave us the opportunity to volunteer in our community and help a variety of people. My experience with the club has taught me numerous life lessons and traits. These traits include empowerment, compassion, and gratitude. The first of these exceptional traits is empowerment. With empowerment, I realized that I have the ability to make someone’s life better. It has built up my self-worth beyond words. For example, our club made weekly visits to the local nursing home. We would sit with the men and women and share stories, sing songs, and eat lunch with them. It does not seem like much, but they always told us how much they appreciated us for coming. It made our club happy to know we were making them smile and changing their lives in a positive way.
The next trait that I inherited is compassion. It always hurts my heart knowing there are people who do not know where their next meal is coming from or where they will be sleeping that night. This gave me the idea to sign my club up to volunteer to help, specifically at the local soup kitchen. We arrived early to cook the food. Later that day, people of all ages came piling into the building. The amount of men, women, and children that were there overwhelmed me. I could not believe there were that many homeless people in my community. Another volunteer project that my club participated in was a canned food drive for the
Ms. Nero
ENG 1113
24 June 2014
Finding Myself in the Service of Others I realized the world was evolving when I went on a trip to New York City with my former high school classmates. The amount of homeless people on the streets in Times Square blew my mind. It made me feel very fortunate for the life that I have. When it was time to go home, my best friend and I came up with an idea for a club at our school. We teamed up and started a club called FCCLA. It stands for Family Career and Community Leaders of America. It was a community service based club. It gave us the opportunity to volunteer in our community and help a variety of people. My experience with the club has taught me numerous life lessons and traits. These traits include empowerment, compassion, and gratitude. The first of these exceptional traits is empowerment. With empowerment, I realized that I have the ability to make someone’s life better. It has built up my self-worth beyond words. For example, our club made weekly visits to the local nursing home. We would sit with the men and women and share stories, sing songs, and eat lunch with them. It does not seem like much, but they always told us how much they appreciated us for coming. It made our club happy to know we were making them smile and changing their lives in a positive way.
The next trait that I inherited is compassion. It always hurts my heart knowing there are people who do not know where their next meal is coming from or where they will be sleeping that night. This gave me the idea to sign my club up to volunteer to help, specifically at the local soup kitchen. We arrived early to cook the food. Later that day, people of all ages came piling into the building. The amount of men, women, and children that were there overwhelmed me. I could not believe there were that many homeless people in my community. Another volunteer project that my club participated in was a canned food drive for the