“I’ve
learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget how you made me feel.” (Maya Angelou).
In March I
had the opportunity to volunteer at the Veterans Village. When I first got
there, I brought my cupcakes and went upstairs to the room to set them up. As I
was taking up my things for the dinner, I also helped another one of my
classmates that was there helping out who just had surgery on her arm, so I was
helping her take up her sodas so she didn’t have to apply too much weight on
her arm.
To start off with I introduced myself to the fellow classmates that
were there that night volunteering. I was able to get to know some of them, as
I went to high school with one of the guys and I learned another one of the
girls was in two of my classes, so that instantly brought me a friend for the
rest of the semester in my two classes with her. My role in the Veterans dinner
was passing out desserts. I had brought in about 40 cupcakes and so one by one
I would ask the people if they would like a cupcake or not, sometimes I got to
engage in a brief conversation with some of the people while they were
collecting their items for dinner. Once that was all done, we started to clean
up. We had a great system going of passing the foldable boxes and places one of
each our items inside the box and then passed it down the line. This was really
fun because when someone got caught up and was slow, we would slightly mess
with each other telling one another to “pick up the pace”.
This
experienced helped me use my core values because I grew up in a military
family. I didn’t do this assignment just for the extra credit but also because
if my dad or family was in their situation, I felt I would be very appreciated
for the dinner being served. I wanted to be able to give back in more ways than
I already do, serving dinner for an hour to make a difference in those people’s
days was life changing. I love engaging with new people and helping out where
is needed. I have been to places where we help military families, whether it is
giving food out or giving clothes or toiletries and it truly makes a difference
in their lives.
Other
people should really take the opportunity to find ways to contribute because
they don’t realize how impactful it is until they do it. Sometimes doing an
assignment for extra credit can bring a whole new perspective to someone. Just
standing in the room and serving people who fought for you can just be really
moving and you never realize how much you mean to them until you do it
yourself. From a military family myself, I would encourage people to contribute
because they gave up so much for you and taking a small part out of your time
to give to them means more than the world to them. It is a memory both you and
the veterans themselves will never forget.
