About Me

My Experience and skills

1. Indianapolis Muslim Community Association Food Pantry

I'm a volunteer at my communities local food pantry. I have been a volunteer here for about two and a half years. At the food pantry we package food for families in need in our local mosque basement. We not only serve the Muslim community but anyone who is in need of the food pantry's services. Every first Saturday of the month the volunteers gather early in the morning to beginning prepping orders for the familes. It takes multiple people to communicate effectively with each other in order for each step in the process from preparing the orders to the families receiving the orders. The way that the food pantry operates because of COVID-19 safety protocols is different than the normal food pantry procedure. Usually everyone is allowed inside the facility and can pick and choose what items their households need, with a limit on how many items they can get of a specific product they might need. This process is no longer in use to ensure the safety of the volunteers and the people who need the food pantries services. The volunteers have taken over this job and the families must stay in there vehicles and a volunteer writes down every item that the family may need. For instance, some families need formulas and diapers because they have babies, other families may not want any diary products. These tasks must be done in a timely and organized manner because most times we are feeding over 100 families every Saturday.

• Visit this website to learn more about the IMCA food pantry: https://theimcaonline.org/imca-food-pantry/

2. Health Career Oppurtunity Program

In highschool I joined an internship program of sorts for low income minority students of color who are interested in the health care field. The program ran twice a year in the summer and in the winter. I have been apart of both programs from my sophmore year until I my senior in highschool. In this program I was able to tour cadaver labs used by IU School of Medicine students. I learned about the process of becoming an organ donor, and different ways cadavers are used in the cadaver lab. I also learned that families can donate their babies to science. I learned about how bodies are preserved with formaldehyde and the height and weight requirements needed in order to be used as a human cadaver. I was able to meet and speak with orthopedic surgeons, medical students in training, nurse practioners, physical therapists, occupational therapist, nurses, physician assisstants, and so many other healthcare workers. Being able to go on site visits and explore different floors of the hospitals and talk to different healthcare workers on the units also resonated with me. I also had the oppurtunity of visiting the Indianapolis Eye Care Center that is on IUPUI's campus and learned about the doctors who perform eye exams, and fill prescriptions for glasses. I visited the School of Denistry where my peers and I learned about the process of going through dental school and we were also able to do a small hands on workshop. Another site that I was able to visit was the IU Health Hospital on IUPUI's campus and learned about kidney transplants from doctors and nurses that have years of experience in the field.

• Visit this website to learn more about HCOP and the different programs they offer: https://uindy.edu/mici-ahec/hcop

3. Nursing Home Volunteer

I have been a nursing home volunteer since the beginning of December 2021 and I still currently volunteer at nursing homes. I help with assissting the residents with activities of daily living like brushing their teeth, giving bed baths, washing their faces in the morning, eating breakfast lunch and dinner, and helped residents with grooming. Help adjust residents in bed, turning them every two hours on their sides. This is to help prevent residents who are bed bound from getting bedsores. Aided residents in activities that improved patients range of motion, due to the right side of the body being debilitated.

4. Some skills that I have aquired through the volunteer experiences that I've had is building communication between myself and anyone that I work with.

• Being able to work under pressure

• Comprehending task assigned to me

• Asking hard questions to make sure that I'm able to complete the task effectively

Areas of Growth

• Advocate for myself more often

• Be able to adapt to new environments quickly

• Speaking up when I need help