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Volunteering with the Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter (BARCS)
Volunteering Through the Shriver Center
The Shriver Center is dedicated to campus and community engagement aimed at addressing critical social challenges. Students can be connected to local service learning opportunities in a variety of fields.
My Service Learning Experience
My service-learning experience is semester-long work in the Shriver Center service-learning program in PRAC 096, for the Fall 2024 semester. Specifically, I was volunteering at the Baltimore Animals Rescue and Care Shelter (BARCS) as a dog walker. BARCS has dozens of dogs that they walk three times daily, to ensure that they are able to get out as much as possible.
Service learning through the Shriver Center is a great way to participate in community action, since all the service opportunities are situated in or close to Baltimore county. I was able to make a connection with the animal care community, and help them in their efforts. The debriefs and journal assignments also helped me reflect on the experiences I had and what role my efforts played in the community at large.
How I Reached the Core Service-Learning Objectives:
Community Engagement: The Shriver Center directly connects students with service opportunities of the local community, whether it be limited to the UMBC Campus or somewhere else in Baltimore. Whatever opportunity students choose, they are involved in direct community engagement. The Shriver Center even takes this a step further by having students really consider the community they are serving; most journal assignments have students discuss exactly how they are engaging with the community.
Civic Agency: I was able to engage with and connect with the dog-walking community, and learned to throw myself into my role as a dog walker. I found myself throwing myself into my role with gusto; if I saw that a dog still needed to be walked, I would walk it. It didn't matter if it was super small or an absolute unit, because all that mattered was that the dog was walked. I noticed that other dog walker would ask me to talk out certain dogs or new arrivals in passing, and it was good to know that they knew they could depend on me.
Capacity for Reflection: Reflection may be hard for me, but journal reflections are a necessary part of PRAC 096. Whether I wanted to or not, I was forced to reflect on what I have done and what my service-learning means. Sometimes it was a challenge; most of the journals involved what people we were serving, but I was mostly interacting with dogs. Even so, I was able to find ways that my work at the animal shelter was ultimately helping other people.
How I Will Meet Program-Wide Learning Objectives:
Being a team member:
I was only one of many dog walkers, which included other students in PRAC 096 and the other volunteers at the shelter. We received training to become dog walkers because that is a high-need role. In that training, we learned how to safely walk the dogs without interactions between the dogs; at any given moment there are maybe a dozen dogs being walked at BARCS, and the dog walkers need to coordinate on the fly. We had to be considerate of other dog walkers and try to think ahead. We would announce ourselves whenever going through a gate or coming by a blind spot, just in case there was another dog walker just out of sight. There were many instances where another dog walker and I would be yelling across a street to coordinate where we were going and how.
Flexibility:
As described above, I had to be flexible and adaptable in my dog walking. Just because I had a route in mind didn't mean I would be able to take it, and had to be ready to choose different paths if needed. However, I also had to be flexible even when I wasn't actively walking a dog. I had to be flexible in the kinds of dogs I would choose to walk, since they came in all different shapes, sizes, and personalities; I had to be ready for anything and be prepared to deal with it. I also had to be flexible in my personal schedule; I didn't have a car, so had to carpool with some other students, and had to be flexible in my schedule outside of classes so that I would have the time to volunteer in the first place
Personal Objectives
Commitment
Commitment
Whatever schedule I decided on, I needed to make sure I followed it. I needed to show up when I said I was going to show up. Especially for the animal shelter, I know that a lot of those places rely heavily on volunteer work. I needed to dedicate time and effort to this, because a lot of people and animals were relying on me. I have and have had pets myself, so I know how much time and effort needs to be put in to make sure they live the happiest lives possible.
Reflection on my Experience and Grand Challenge:
My chosen Grand Challenge is “Provide Access to Clean Water”, and although it seems unrelated to the challenge, I think this kind of volunteer work does have some applicable lessons. Animal shelters tend to hold a lot of animals, and I know a lot of them run at full capacity. That means that the volunteers and workers need to provide food and water to all of the animals. I remember in my time of working there, it seemed like the kennels were always full and everyone was always moving.
I am aware of the fact that many places, including Baltimore, have issues when it comes to safe access to water. Sometimes water is scarce due to drought, but sometimes the water is contaminated and needs to be boiled before drinking. Through previous research, I have learned that a lot of water is wasted by major companies or people in the high upper class, and it can leave everyone else to suffer and less water for a lot of people.
That being said, I was only walking the dogs in my time there. Had I had more time, I would have taken on more roles, but I was happy to fulfil my role as a dog walker, which was a role that they always needed more people to fill. This was a rank 1 experience.
While not as connected to my grand challenge as I would have liked, this was also a provided silver level experience, as it was semester long volunteering through the Shriver Center. I volunteered at BARCS for 10 weeks for about 1.5 hours each week; in the end, I had volunteered 13.33 hours total. In addition to the volunteering, I had to write three reflection journals, and attend a check-in event with the Shriver Center.
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