Introduction to Service Learning

Hello, and thanks for reading. This blog has been set-up to follow my experiences while performing service in the Washington Neighborhood in Dubuque, Iowa. I am a senior honors student at Loras College in Dubuque and originally from Fort Madison, Iowa. Service has been apart of my life from an early age and will continue during the service performed this fall semester. My first exposure to the idea of service in the community occurred when I was around the age of 10 with my grandfather. I would accompany him while he volunteered at the local food pantry and delivering meals on wheels. I was at an age where I had a simple idea of what service was and that it helped people. I continued my exploration of what service was into high school and college by joining the local chapter of the Knights of Columbus and volunteering my time while participating in the events designed to help the community. This past summer I also began to volunteer my time at the long-term residency center for the Great River Medical Center in Burlington, Iowa. I spent my free time traveling there and helping the residents in organized games or delivering snacks and drinks on designated nights. I have learned throughout my service experiences that volunteering can take many shapes, but the commonality is always the presence of the goal to help others.

Loras College has provided me with a liberal arts education that has helped prepare me to be successful in life. Courses in the humanities and social sciences are highlighted in the curriculum with the hope that knowledge in these areas will help to prepare students in relating to people after completion of a degree. Many of the general education courses that I have taken while attending Loras have dealt with the examination of people and societies. Many of the courses have focused on how people think and interact in different societies throughout the known history of man. Understanding how the people of cultures have thought in the past and realizing the similarities in today's society will help me to develop close relationships with people that I meet during the course of everyday life. I believe this course will help to connect what I have learned in the classroom to what people actually need and believe in real life. I hope this course will allow me to identify a need in a community and then develop my service skills to help fulfill that need. I am sure that I will enjoy helping others throughout the next three months and I am looking forward to taking a closer look at specific areas that are in need of service within the Washington Neighborhood.

In preparation for my service experience, I explored the Washington Neighborhood with Russ. My first initial thoughts of the neighborhood was that it looked very familiar to how other river towns in Iowa look. The Washington Neighborhood is in the older part of town near the river and seems to be filled with historic looking Victorian homes. I come from a Mississippi River town and there are many commonalities in appearance with the Washington Neighborhood. The old part of town in Fort Madison is full of the large brick houses and small lots that I noticed in Dubuque. The most noticeable aspect of the community was the amount of churches and ongoing improvements that I noticed. There were at least five people either sitting outside on the porches or walking on the sidewalk at each block while I made my observational trip. Russ and I made our trip just as school was dismissing so we saw many young families walking throughout the neighborhood. The neighborhood seemed very diverse as we encountered people from many different backgrounds. Very few of the buildings looked run down or in poor condition. In fact, there were quite a few instances where construction was being performed to improve structures. The overall impression I got from my exploration was that the Washington Neighborhood is a community that is trying to improve itself and I am looking forward to volunteering my time and helping them reach their goals.