Civic Identity

Serving with the teachers at the Moore Community House taught me quite a bit about what it takes to have a strong civic identity. This organization acts as a childcare program for kids, ranging from infants to three year-olds. I served with the older kids, (if you can call three year-olds, old), where I mostly helped make turtles out of Play-Doh and cleaned up beans.

Going into the Moore Community House, it was unclear how I would use my civic identity. We just cleaned up messes, read Captain Underpants, sang and danced to kids songs, restocked the storage room, and chased off lizards and newts in their garden. How could completing all of these small, menial tasks, and hanging out with kids, be considered an act of citizenship?

It became clear by the end of our time at that Moore Community House that these small individual acts do add up; that our collective service could make a tangible difference for the staff and kids in ways that, I hope, extend far beyond our relatively short period of time serving with them. Learning that these small acts of service contribute to my civic identity is a lesson that I hope to use in the future.

Before our trip, I didn't know how big of an impact our group could have on the community of Biloxi. We learned in lectures about active citizenship and the concept of "serving with." These ideas helped me better understand the concept of civic identity, but I still didn't fully know how apply them.

One morning of our trip, we volunteered at Loaves and Fishes. We prepared meals, took inventory of the storage room, and served food to people. These tasks were not extremely challenging, but they made a huge impact on the people around us. The people we served food to were so grateful. They said thank you to every one of us as we placed a different item on their tray. I also really enjoyed when they came up to talk to us after they finished eating. We shared stories and it was really interesting learning about peoples life journeys. Not everyone we served was from the state of Mississippi, and we even had a fellow volunteer from Great Britain.

I have volunteered at soup kitchens before, but this experience was different. Loaves and Fishes was its own community within Biloxi. Many of the volunteers go there 4 days a week and not just for one day. I felt slightly guilty about this because a lot of people volunteer just once and never return. I now feel inspired to find a place to volunteer at regularly in our own community of Iowa City. I was greatly impacted by our short time at Loaves and Fishes. While we were there, the simple tasks didn't seem like much. However, when reflecting I realized that the little things really do add up. I am so thankful for the opportunity we had to help others and am looking forward to doing more service.

I was surprised by how quickly our team could engage in this small community. We chatted with members about some interesting life stories, sports, foods, and movies. From the beginning, our conversations never stopped. Chatting helped us soon become friends. We started to play Bingo. Each member and our team was so excited about it, so was I. We laughed, talked, and chatted during the game. Bella used her humor to create many funny sentences and made the game more interesting. For me, I felt we were getting closer during Bingo. It was my first time to playing it. Kethy, one of the members of the Mental Health Association said don’t worry, and she taught me how to play Bingo. I felt she was so sweet and nice. Bingo made our service team grow closer to these members and we were involved in this community and its members.

Bingo was just the warm-up. The director invited us to do physical activities with members. We strongly agreed with her idea. Therefore, dancing and playing sports with members were my best memories from this trip. There were some excellent games because some members had really good performance on sports. Ben, Chris, Kyle, and Mike played football with members. Nikki showed her gymnastic skills and we all loved it. These activities helped us be completely involved in this community. We learned more about other people and ourselves.

To me civic identity is to locate self in the community and engage and be active in community. Our volunteer experience definitely displayed civic identity at the Mental Health Association. Chatting, playing bingo, and sports helped us quickly engage in the Biloxi community. We were glad to spend time with those wonderful people.