5th
Where To Start???
One major mental obstacle that my community service group as a whole had to overcome was accepting that we had neither the funding nor the time to fix the entire school. We were given a list of areas that needed fixing and our initial reaction was lets do it all. People were saying, “I want to leave having really changed something,” and it took a while to realize that simply by being there we were making a difference. We were told over and over again that our presence touched the kids just as much as any physical changes we made, but it wasn’t until the last day when the kids were hugging us and telling us not to go that our affect became clear.
We were not content with just being there, however, and we also were determined to help the school. We decided our time would be best spent making a damaged classroom usable. To do this, we needed to paint the outside of the classroom, fix the windows, sand and varnish the desks, and fix up the floor. The task seemed simple enough when we first began, but due to weather problems and budget restrictions, it became a battle against time. We were eventually able to complete our task before we left, and though we were happy about having finished the classroom, we were more happy to have impacted the lives of children by simply interacting with them.
