Community Service
Yesenia Rodriguez 12-5-2011
Reflection Essay Duchesne Scholar
As one of the coordinators of the St. Stephen’s AIDS Dinner I feel it’s every individual’s responsibility to help others in their community and beyond. The weekly routine is to travel into New York City to help serve food at Stephen's church to men and women who suffer from AIDS. The women and men who attend the Saint Stephens AIDS dinner are in a way people who have lost many things in life due to their illness. In many cases many have lost the support from their families, the opportunity to work in certain jobs, and the ability to share their life with a close partner, in addition to creating a family. Many of them even have become homeless, and so seek to find places such as this one where they will provide a few of the necessities they need to survive. As the semester went by I would come to learn how the program worked, my role in the program, how the program grew, and the changes I feel could be made to better the program. The first approach is that the program is located in a largely populated area in the middle of New York City in a church, where there is many ethnic groups of different social classes. When entering the downstairs dining hall at the church, and come across many different people you wonder what all of their life’s are outside the church. Later you come to learn that many attend not just for a warm meal that might be the only meal of the day they had, but also to meet new people they can share the meal with and have a conversation with. This became clearer when week after week passed and the same people sat with one another with the exception of a few who moved around. The setup of the dining hall in many ways contributes in bringing the members closer together, as they sit in round tables with around eight to ten people on each table. The members of the church who are the key of creating this community service are constantly on a weekly basis making sure that
Reflection Essay Duchesne Scholar
As one of the coordinators of the St. Stephen’s AIDS Dinner I feel it’s every individual’s responsibility to help others in their community and beyond. The weekly routine is to travel into New York City to help serve food at Stephen's church to men and women who suffer from AIDS. The women and men who attend the Saint Stephens AIDS dinner are in a way people who have lost many things in life due to their illness. In many cases many have lost the support from their families, the opportunity to work in certain jobs, and the ability to share their life with a close partner, in addition to creating a family. Many of them even have become homeless, and so seek to find places such as this one where they will provide a few of the necessities they need to survive. As the semester went by I would come to learn how the program worked, my role in the program, how the program grew, and the changes I feel could be made to better the program. The first approach is that the program is located in a largely populated area in the middle of New York City in a church, where there is many ethnic groups of different social classes. When entering the downstairs dining hall at the church, and come across many different people you wonder what all of their life’s are outside the church. Later you come to learn that many attend not just for a warm meal that might be the only meal of the day they had, but also to meet new people they can share the meal with and have a conversation with. This became clearer when week after week passed and the same people sat with one another with the exception of a few who moved around. The setup of the dining hall in many ways contributes in bringing the members closer together, as they sit in round tables with around eight to ten people on each table. The members of the church who are the key of creating this community service are constantly on a weekly basis making sure that