When you serve you do more than just volunteer a couple days or hours of your time. Going on a service trip and emerging yourself into the community while providing resources for what the community needs that go beyond a new house, new mural or making new friends. From when I first came to college, especially going to a small Catholic college, you hear the word "service" a lot, but no one ever really tells you what it means. It takes an experience of service to understand that when you serve you experience what the people serve experience, you don't just develop friendships but instead you develop relationships and you don't just visit a community but you become a part of one.
My first service trip I had the opportunity to take with Habitat for Humanity. While there are plenty of organizations that support service trips, they all have the same goals. Habitat for Humanity is a faith-based organization that aims to build long-term financial stability for families battling poverty. Habitat's volunteers build houses to make the cost of them affordable for families to use the money they save on a home to spend on food, clothing, and other necessities.
The site that my group served was in Birmingham, Alabama. Poverty in Birmingham is 47.1 percent, displaying that "nearly one of every two residents in the ZIP code lives below poverty level" (Weldbham). There was one house we spent three full days building the outside and a second house that we spent one full day working on the inside (it was a rainy day) repairing the inside while giving the walls a new coat of paint.
The experience you get on a service trip cannot be captured through photographs. While people take and upload pictures of their trip, no pictures or words could describe the feeling of actually being there and doing the work. You get experience working with people, tools, and yourself. You learn that you can push yourself a little harder than you thought and that you have more to give. Before going on my service trip, I had no idea how to use a screwdriver. By the end, I was cutting wood with a power saw. The idea of going near dangerous power tools made me think I could never be much of a help with building houses. I was terrified to climb up a ladder and would hesitate to go up it without someone holding the bottom. While building the house, I got over those fears and realized I do much more than I thought I could.
I had the amazing experience of meeting Gale*. She is the homeowner of the home that my group was building for the majority of the trip. Gale works a full-time job while raising two children and volunteering with Habitat for Humanity on Saturdays. She told us how appreciative she was of our group and told us how she plans to go back to school to obtain a nursing degree. While people serve by actually working with people of the community, sometimes people serving with Habitat never get the chance to meet the person who is going to live in the house they built. Meeting Gale and returning to the house the next day to continue building gave me a new motivation. When I worked in certain areas of the house, I suddenly turned into a perfectionist, wanting each detail to be nice enough for Gale to enjoy once she moved in.
My experience serving in Birmingham, Alabama is one I will never forget. For all people who go out on service trips, they have probably had very similar experiences to mine. Whether you are building homes or painting murals, service We were able to build a home out of a house, who wouldn't want to have a chance to do that?
*name changed for privacy reasons
