Reflection Essay: My volunteer Contribution
I think I had a really great experience while volunteering for the child Advocacy center in Martinsburg, Wv this semester. Our group went to meet with Rusty Holland the director for the first time and he discussed what we would be doing as far as volunteer work and what he needed done. The Safe Haven Center in Martinsburg was an old storage building and was taken over to become what it is now. As the storage facility it was old really dusty and required a lot of cleaning and organizing. Personally I do not like to clean but with my group the work became fun, not only did I get to help a worthy cause I got to get to know my classmates and made lots of lasting friendships. The work Rusty gave us was mainly cleaning and reorganizing the old rooms to become functional again and making use of the items donated to Safe Haven like building desk chairs and cleaning and restoring furniture.
We did do a lot of manual work but I think it was definitely worth it when we saw the end result for the open house in April. We got to see the old pink house go from and unusable space to a fully functioning Advocacy center. We also go to see the inter workings of the child advocacy, what they do for their victims and their families and we also go to contribute a brochure to help the families understand the advocacy process and the disciplines involved. I had lots of fun volunteering; it was frustrating at times because of conflicting schedules and distance from the campus but I would recommend anyone to volunteer for this organization in the fall.