On Oct. 22, I got the
chance to know Lupus by joining a walking hold by The Alliance for Lupus
Research (ALR), which is a national voluntary health organization based in New
York City that was founded in 1999, for the first time. The reason I did this
community service was that it was a requirement of my freshman seminar class.
When I first heard that
I would be engaging in a community service project, I felt that was too much
trouble, since I had to waste my time and energy for others in order to
complete this meaningless project.
The goals of this
walking for Lupus were to cause more people’s attentions to the disease Lupus
and encourage them to contribute either money or time to support the studies
and patients. When I got there, I was shocked, since there were hundreds of
people, including elders and children, standing there and preparing themselves
for the walking. The point was most people showed up that day didn’t suffer
from Lupus, instead, they were there just because they wanted to try their best
to help. This made me realize how selfish I was when I tended to refuse to give
my time and energy to do this community service.
During the whole
process of walking, I was talking with some people who had been involved in
this walking for several years. All of them thought that it was a pleasure to
contribute what they had to help others, and they were all glad to keep
participating this walking every year. Their generousness encouraged me to care
more about others and help them as well.
After I finished this
community service project, I changed my thinking, attitudes and actions towards
others, myself, the community and community service work as a whole. I started
to think that all of us came together and formed our community, and everyone in
our community was important. Therefore for the development and improvement of
our community, we definitely needed community service to help those groups of
people who were in trouble, and we should participate more community services
instead of being selfish and caring only ourselves as well.dmdmffHow has your community service
experience impacted your personallyndsaa
In a word, this service-learning
experience was useful and helpful. I was satisfied with my experience overall,
since I had learnt a lot of things and found a way to improve myself personally.
Therefore I think I will be staying involved in the community during my college
and adult years.
