wward1's Travel Journals

wward1

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  • 25 years old
  • From Florida, United States
  • Currently in United States

My Community Service

When I think of community service, I think of something that someone does for the community that not only helps the community but makes the person doing the service feel good. An example of my community service would be in the summer when I coach kids in Jacksonville Universities Upward Bound Softball, Track, and Spades. Upward Bound (UB) is a program for aspiring high school students that want to get ahead and prepare for college. At the end of the summer UB has an Olympic Ceremony were kids from UBs all over Florida meet and do a variety of events, everything from spelling bee’s to billiards to swimming and basketball. This is my favorite part of community service, because not only does the staff tutor the student during the program we get to watch them develop and make friends throughout the 6 week program. These kids aren’t always from the best areas and sometimes aren’t necessarily the most college ready individuals, so it makes me feel good to show them that if I am making it so can they. The Olympic Ceremony is something that is frequently talked about, but teacher and the rest of the staff have the constantly remind them that if they don’t have above a 2.0 in week 5 when grades come out then they cannot participate in the Olympics or the Mr. & Ms. Upward Bound pageant. It is a good feeling when kids that graduate from the program come back and tell how much the staff helped them succeed not only in the classroom, but in life.

Journal 4

Ecuador Guayaquil, Ecuador  |  Mar 23, 2008
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Day four, the sun is shinning and it’s hot, we head to a place called Ines Chambers. We head over to Ines Chambers and this place, like Padre Pio, it’s in a rough part of town. We arrive there and go on a tour of the facilities we see some of the classrooms, their dinning facility, their outdoor play area, and there computer lab. After the tour they say we can either help strip the paint off the wall or play with the kids. Everyone just wants to help so we all jump into helping strip the wall however I realize that all the kids are just standing there watching us sand paper this wall so I decide to go play with so of the kids. I didn’t realize how big soccer was going to be but when we pulled out the soccer ball kids came running from every direction. We played a game of soccer and I played one of the kids in one on one and he kicked my butt 6-3. All the kids could play big-small, boy-girl, tall-short, old and young, that was a real surprise to me, because I haven’t ever seen a sport where EVERYONE can play and is better than average. After that we played a game of basketball with more people and everyone had a good time. Then we stopped and went inside to make necklaces and bracelets. It happened to be one of the girls birthday so we all went and sung happy birthday to her and ate some cake. As we leave we take some pictures and head back to the hotel. When we get back to the hotel we head to a local internet café and notice that the people their use the internet for the exact same thing Americans do, to download music and chat with friends. Guayaquil has a lot of people and during the day the sidewalks are packed with people. We get some dinner for $2(sub and a drink) then head to the hotel we meet and learn a little Spanish and afterwards we walk around the city.
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