Towards the end of May, the English Through Volunteering students will head to the Corvallis Boys and Girls Club for fun and games! Before the visit, they’ll spend time preparing games and exhibits to engage kids and teach them about the students’ cultures. It will be interesting to see what kinds of activities they come up with!
In mid-May, some students will visit Corvallis Manor, and others will visit Stoneybrook Lodge. Before the visit, we’ll be learning about types of senior living homes and their roles in society in the United States.
Students will then have a chance to go and chat with residents during social time in which they listen to stories, talk about their own lives in their home countries and their academic goals, and connect with their conversation partners on the basis of shared interests and experiences. It’s a great opportunity to show caring and nurture cultural exchange!
In the second week of May, the English Through Volunteering class has a volunteer visit scheduled to Avery Park, where Corvallis Parks and Recreation will have a project for us to help with.
Whether it’s trimming the roses, picking up the grounds, or one of several other tasks that must be done daily and weekly to maintain the park, students are looking forward to participating in taking care of one of the many green spaces that make Corvallis such a livable and healthful community.
Students discussed homeless as a social issue in their home countries and also in the United States and critically examined its causes and effect on life in our societies. They also learn about organization like Benton Habitat for Humanity and Restore, which work to empower people to own their own homes by enlisting community support and “sweat equity” to get the job done.
At Stone Soup Kitchen, students saw where the food grown at SAGE garden, donated in drives throughout the community, and distributed by Linn Benton Food Share and partner agencies end up: feeding the Corvallis community delicious and nutritious meals
At Linn Benton Food Share, an agency of the Oregon Food Bank, students spent hours working to ensure that food was ready to be distributed to families who needed it. In class, they learned about how the Food Bank operates, how many people are served by the bank and partner agencies like food pantries throughout the country, and how much volunteers are needed to accomplish such large projects.
Student experiences
1-Abdulla Ali from United Arab Emirates .
PRE-SERVICE
Linn Benton Food Share:
I know a bit about the Linn Benton food share that we will work with today. I heard they help people who seek emergency food, by giving them food boxes from the Oregon food bank. We will go today as group to help and support the employees and the volunteers there. We might distribute food to the people there. We will be listening to their instructions, after that we going to do what they will give us. I am looking forward to knowing deeply about Linn Benton Food share. In addition, I want to know how they are organizing their work individually and collectively. I am quite nervous about how we will mange this work successfully, because this is the first time for me and the majority of my group. However, I expect our business will be easy because we will be working as group and that will make the work lighter and faster.
Post –service
I really feel proud to have helped and supported the employees in Linn Benton Food Share. It was my second volunteering program that I have had in the United State. I was nervous but when I went there everything went well. My role there was to take the food from the donation boxes and sort them in the right place such as dry food, vegetables, fruit ,meat, beans and soup. We learned many things today. I was struggling at the beginning about how to sort the food in the right box. However, I fixed this issue when the supervisor explained to us how to divide each piece and sort it in the right box. She gave us important instructions about our business, such as: don’t sort dented cans , sort the liquid slowly because there were glass and sort the food in the right box. When we were done with this job, we moved to break the boxes down to recycle them. Finally, we boxed the food with specific weight which was 24 Grams. After that we took a tour around the store to get knowledge about the rest of the store.
For the first volunteer trip of the spring, students visited SAGE community garden, a project of the Corvallis Environmental Center. They learned about food insecurity and how networks of social organizations work to ensure that all community members have access to healthy food, consistently.
Student experiences:
Pre-Service
I am excited to volunteer at SAGE garden and help people there to plant and grow vegetables and fruits that will help the society and people, and it will also help the environment by producing the oxygen in the air. I expect to help people there by growing and planting seeds, and also to weed. As a ” green thumb ” person, I used to help my father – who is a proud farmer – by planting seeds and harvesting dates from palms then drying them under the sun for days. I hope from this visit to gain extra knowledge and experience and help people who are in need by planting some foods for them.
Post-Service
Volunteering at SAGE was a valuable experience in which I felt that I did something good and helped people in this community. SAGE garden is a small garden that helps the community by planting some foods and Organic vegetables. We start our volunteering with the seed taping, by separating parsnips seeds into a two layers of a toilet paper, then folding them into a piece of paper. This process will help the seeds to germinate easily in the soil. Later after that we planted some peans into a manured soil. And finally we cleaned the soil from bad herbs and roots, then we grow some plants such as Money Plants. It was a really good experience and I enjoyed it very much.
Abdulmalik Alhudaithy – Saudi Arabia