Application of Knowledge

Sai Nikita Tummala, Zhiqian Zhuang , Abby Rummelhart

What knowledge we applied to the service team?

Active citizens are citizens who think about what type of impact they have on their society. They are able to understand how one action can affect several other factors. Active citizens also understand that living in a community means that we all have to do something to change the world around us to be a better place. They also acknowledge that society has problems, and different communities have different issues plaguing them, but they want to change these inequalities by taking actions. Another thing to touch on is the concept of being an active citizen and acting like one. Being an active citizen means being aware of the inequalities that surround society and working towards making change in community as an intrinsic value. Acting as an active citizen seems to be something that would describe a person who is aware of the social issues surrounding them. However, to make a change about these issues, people that act like a active citizen have to make a conscious effort to make a change in these changes. But, like discussed in class, there does not need to be a difference between these two. It is possible to be both an active citizen and act like an active citizen.

Throughout our trip, we worked with a lot of different organizations, but the important thing to recognize is how the service was with the community. There was never a sense of helping the community for them, but it was a service with the community. Additionally, some of the service projects that were worked on did not involve direct contact with community members however, it was important to recognize that any action to helping is a very significant action. It was to never discredit any type of service because all of it is still giving back to the community. It is still serving with and not to someone.

Also, when we were divided into several groups to work on different service, we applied the knowledge of collaboration and group development that we learned from the lecture to the work. During the work, we helped each other because everyone had strength and weakness, and we did our job efficiently which lead to a good outcome.

Knowledge outside the lecture- Holistic Approach

One of the biggest things I learned throughout this semester in this class and my other classes is the idea of taking a holistic approach to fix a problem or issue.

Holistic approach is the idea that instead of trying to fix one issue that corresponds to a problem, the whole picture is taken into account when trying to fix a problem. All the issues that may impact a situation are looked at and improved to provide the best help possible.

While our main issue was housing many organizations took a holistic approach when providing help.

The House of Peace for example had a food pantry that provided a variety of food to the people in the community, along with fresh sandwiches. But that was not all that they offered to their community. They also set up a clothing drive, have health services for the community, and even bring in lawyers to give advice and help the community.

The Guest House focused on the holistic approach with homeless men at their homeless shelter. Every man is given a case worker that helps them get on their feet, find jobs, and locate permanent housing while the man participates in a 5-8 month program called LEADS. The goal of this program is to provide classes to help the men achieve independence. Other organizations are brought in to provide meals for the men that stay there, and make pre-made sandwiches for members of the surrounding community. Other services they have on site are therapy to help men suffering from a mental illness and drug rehab to help deal with addiction. Lastly the Guest House offers special more independent living to veterans.

ACTS Housing takes a slightly different approach to dealing with the housing issue. They help people purchase a home and get loans. They also provide services and financial counseling to help the community learn more about loans, mortgages, and how to get ready to buy a house. Last but not least they provide loans to families to help buy and renovate houses if the family is not able to get a loan from the bank for the amount needed.

All three of these services takes different approaches at dealing with an overall problem in housing; however, they all offer a variety of services to the community in order to take a more holistic approach and solve the problem from different dimensions. This is important when dealing with problems because typically there are more than one thing that causes or is effected by a problem. By targeting a problems by fixing all of the effects instead of just one it help increase the success of the solution. The Guest house for example had a 65% success rate at relocating and housing the men in the LEADS program. ACTS has similar success using a holistic approach with only a 6% foreclosure rate on the houses, half of the national average.

Future

Moving forward we are all hoping to be more active citizen, and actively seek to educate ourselves on the issues in our local communities. We plan to volunteer more in our free time and help out local organizations to make a bigger impact on our community.

Google Sites

Report abuse