India Sullivan Community Service Practicum 10/17/2013

Midterm Reflective Essay When I first signed up to take the community service practicum course this semester, I did so grudgingly. I have not had many positive experiences with community service in the past, and I was not looking forward to getting my hands dirty again. There are several steps to the process of becoming a volunteer, but none more important than the internalization of the importance of what you are doing to serve your community. I set out to find an organization which I had not yet served in my years of community service. In high school my parents forced me to help serve at a food bank, which I did not enjoy. When I moved to Charlotte for college, I participated in Habitat for Humanity builds, fundraisers for cancer, and soup kitchens, but none of it really became personal until I started my work with Project Halo. Project Halo is a non-profit, no-kill animal shelter and sanctuary in Charlotte, NC. The organization is entirely run out of two homes rather than a shelter like the Human Society, and unlike nearly all of the animal shelters in Charlotte, Project Halo has a strict no-kill policy, meaning that no matter whether the animal is adopted or not, they promise to take care of the animal, foster the animal in homes, and to treat the animal as if it were their own pet for the rest of the animals life. The fact that the shelter was entirely volunteer run and donation based, as well as the no-kill policy, was what drew me to work with Project Halo.

My first event which I volunteered with Project Halo was an adoption day in Birkdale Village, a wealthy strip mall which draws quite a crowd on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I was unsure of what to expect when I arrived, but once the dogs started to pile out of the van, I couldnt contain my excitement any longer. I have always been a sucker for animals, especially those who are friendly. Amongst the dogs which were brought to the adoption day was a recent rescue named Riley. Riley is a 2 year old pocket lab, which is to say that he is a lab mix which was significantly malnourished in his puppyhood, not allowing him the nutrition he needed to grow into a full sized lab. Project Halo was notified of this dog in need when a 16 year old girl found him stuck in a briar patch. He had an embedded collar, meaning he had a pronged training collar which had not grown while he grew, forcing the collar to dig into his neck and the skin to grow around it. This was one of the worst embedded collars I had ever seen. The skin where the collar had been was torn open, rotting, and infected with maggots. When one hears maggots and rotting flesh one thinks of death, already dead things that were once living, but this was the state we found the dog Riley, a living creature which had been abandoned and left for dead. The pictures certainly were not for the faint of heart, showing close-ups of his neck and ribs. Miraculously Riley survived once Project Halo took him to a vet immediately after finding him, and a week later Riley was sitting before me at the adoption day. This was the first significant moment in which I found myself internalizing my volunteer work for Project Halo. I took pictures during the adoption day, and after I edited the pictures, I found myself showing the dogs off at every chance I was given. After spending a few hours with these dogs I had already felt a fondness for them that can only come from compassion. This was a feeling I had not felt in my experience with community service in the past.

Not long after the first adoption day was another weekend-long event at the NASCAR Track. This event was much less dog oriented and more donation focused. We set up a booth at the venders row outside of the racetrack with three goals: 1) to raise encourage adopting animals instead of shopping for them, 2) to encourage spaying and neutering as a preventative measure and 3) to raise money for Project Halo. After my first encounter with Project Halo, I was excited about this new endeavor. I found myself drawing people into our booth, talking to them about the dangers of not spaying and neutering, reciting a speech about Project Halo, and before long I was talking about the organization as if it was mine. I used terms such as we and our. Project Halos goals became my goals, their work was my work. The transformation to internalization was complete, and I was identifying with the work I was doing for the first time in my life. Internalization of responsibility creates community. Community service is better served when you are a part of and passionate about the community which you serve. Being surrounded by passionate people does not always make you passionate, but an internalization of the work you are doing will light a fire inside of you which can be unstoppable. For me, that moment began with Riley and was finalized at the NASCAR event. At this event, I served two of the three days, nearly 20 hours, and in that time I managed to help raise over $600 for Project Halo from talking to possible donors at venders row. Once we internalize the responsibility, we become powerhouses for good, unstoppable in our building up our community.