Reflection
Fall semester of 2012, I took the Exploring Community Engagement honors seminar to learn more about the community at UC and the city of Cincinnati. I am not from Cincinnati and although living 40 minutes from this city might not seem like it would make much of a difference, I was not aware of half the programs, problems and activities found here until I took this class. This class was not your typical classroom experience, in fact, most of the learning took place at many different areas of the city, with many different teachers, and everyone came away with different revelations from what we learned. We learned all about privilege, power, race, poverty, social systems, gentrification, homelessness and a variety of community programs and were able to find our place in society and see how important it is to put yourself in other's shoes because if we never look at life through another perspective we will never affectively make any positive change to the community's issues.
I am very glad that I took this class because I was given the opportunity to connect with people that have goals for the community in different ways and they all would benefit greatly from my efforts to spread awareness of their programs and services. I was hoping to learn of programs needing volunteers for a meaningful purpose and not just to give students a way to get hours. I got much more than a list of wonderful community organizations I could volunteer at because I came away with a sense of belonging to my community now that I know much more about its history, its struggles, and future goals.
As a future nurse and member of society, I think what I learned from this class will help me to treat others in a more understanding way than before. Although I have had lots of encounters with community members from different backgrounds, I never learned much about the social constructs that sometimes make people have the experiences that they have. Now that I can view society in more analytic terms, I can see how privilege and power can affect one person's whole life simply because of how other's view them as a result of social influence.
My artifact for this seminar includes the Community Outreach Project I did to look into the community services offered by Happen Inc. for less privileged kids in the Northside community. I think this project represents everything that we tried to experience from all of our excursions into the city because my partner and I gathered information from the organization's volunteers and the owner himself much like we did with the class, we found ties to other community organizations providing services to the families with kids and we found connections to the class reading materials about poverty, education, and privilege.
I am very glad that I took this class because I was given the opportunity to connect with people that have goals for the community in different ways and they all would benefit greatly from my efforts to spread awareness of their programs and services. I was hoping to learn of programs needing volunteers for a meaningful purpose and not just to give students a way to get hours. I got much more than a list of wonderful community organizations I could volunteer at because I came away with a sense of belonging to my community now that I know much more about its history, its struggles, and future goals.
As a future nurse and member of society, I think what I learned from this class will help me to treat others in a more understanding way than before. Although I have had lots of encounters with community members from different backgrounds, I never learned much about the social constructs that sometimes make people have the experiences that they have. Now that I can view society in more analytic terms, I can see how privilege and power can affect one person's whole life simply because of how other's view them as a result of social influence.
My artifact for this seminar includes the Community Outreach Project I did to look into the community services offered by Happen Inc. for less privileged kids in the Northside community. I think this project represents everything that we tried to experience from all of our excursions into the city because my partner and I gathered information from the organization's volunteers and the owner himself much like we did with the class, we found ties to other community organizations providing services to the families with kids and we found connections to the class reading materials about poverty, education, and privilege.
happen_inc._community_outreach_paper.docx | |
File Size: | 63 kb |
File Type: | docx |