Service Learning

Experiences:

Service is something that I have always been very passionate about, and because of that I have been involved with many service commitments in my time at UMBC. I have chosen to use four of them to count as a Silver experience, two of them are previous involvements I had, while two of them are ones that are ongoing involvements.

Silver:

Various Service Project Involvements

• Current: First Lego League (FLL), Toolbank
• Previous: Eco-Ambassador (Fall 2014), The Garden (Fall 2014)
• 135+ hour time commitment

The service projects that I have been involved in have all been ones that have been tied to the local community, and have helped me grow a lot personally, as well as help others. The commitments tied the most to my challenge are the Eco-Ambassador role, and my role with The Garden. These two are both focuses on sustainability, which ties in directly to providing access to clean water.

Learning Objectives:

Program Learning Objectives:

Realistic Vision

• As an Eco-Ambassador, trying to make both social and policy change on campus made me develop a very realistic vision on what is possible and what is not
• Sometimes you must take steps you don’t want to in order to reach your final goal

Persistence

• As an Eco-Ambassador, I also had to be very persistent to try to make changes on campus due to issues in policy and of general resistance to social change

Being a Team Member

• With The Garden, FLL, and as an Eco-Ambassador I had to work with a team of people who had a variety of skills and backgrounds
• I learned how to divvy up tasks in order to get the goal done, as well as cooperate with those who have different viewpoints and ways of working

Integrity

• Through being a judge and referee for FLL, I must be impartial and unbiased when scoring, even if I want to be biased based on personal favorites or some other reason

Flexibility

• At Toolbank, we never know what our task will be for the day, so we must be flexible and willing to do anything, as well as quick to learn how to complete the tasks

Service Learning Objectives:

Community Engagement

• The Garden has a plot for local refugees to grow their own food and would try to use local businesses as much as possible when getting supplies for The Garden
• As an eco-ambassador, one of the projects that I was working on was to get a farmer’s market brought on campus, and when that didn’t work I began working on getting a bus to take UMBC students to the local farmer’s markets in order for UMBC students to interact more with farmers and businesses from the local community
• Toolbank's main goal is to provide resources for the Community of Baltimore, and we are helping to complete that mission through our work
• FLL connects with the community through working with the local schools and getting younger students involved in STEM

Civic Agency

• The Garden's collaboration with refugees living locally seeks to improve the food supply and activity of the refugees
• Connecting UMBC students with local businesses and farmers through the farmer’s market helps to create a more positive relationship between UMBC and the community
• Toolbank helps communities with clean ups, community events, and other service projects, so we indirectly work with all of these
• FLL connects with young students and tries to grow young minds so that they can have a more successful future

Capacity for Reflection

• The Garden made me more sustainable with my food choices and I started to buy organic and shopped at local farmer’s markets as much as possible. I would rather spend more time and money going to the market in order to support and grow relationships with local farmers than I would to go buy from the store
• As an eco-ambassador, I reflected more on my own sustainable habits and how to improve them. I also reflected on how social change was the key to making powerful change with the environment and began to find ways to help make this happen
• Toolbank made me reflect on ways I can myself get more involved in the Baltimore community, and I am helping to start a partnership between a student organization I am in and a church in East Baltimore to start helping the students and families living in that area
• FLL made me want to get involved in future STEM programs with students and wants me to continue to help with this, even after graduation

Commitment

• All of these service events were reoccurring, not a one time service project; this requires continuous commitment
• Commitment to a service project can make a much larger, and long lasting impact than a one-time event can