Explanation of My Hours
All of my hours were in the form of civil service volunteering, specifically helping organize and conduct a food drive at my high school for St. Mary’s Food Bank with the help of National Honor Society. Nearly all of the work was done with other NHS officers including Sam Sidoti and Danielle Lackey.
Our first order of business was to advertise for the food drive. On October 25 we spent an hour and a half making posters that would be hung up in the hallways of all the buildings of the high school. Some of the posters were large posters for the center of the hallways, and some were fliers provided by St. Mary’s Food Bank that would go on the billboards and on doors in the buildings.
Once all the posters had been up for a few days we had to make an announcement about the food drive as well. Along with the other officers we wrote the script for a commercial that would treat little cans of food as if they were lost children that needed to be sent to a better home (the food bank). Writing the script, shooting the video and then narrating the video took a total of two hours. We could then give the finished product to the media productions teacher who put it on the announcements so the school would know more about the food drive.
Our third objective was getting all the boxes that the food would be collected in to the classes, and all the boxes were supposed to be given to us by the food bank. However, when they day came to get the boxes we only got half the number of boxes as we had teachers to give them to. So all we could do that day was put the boxes we had together and distribute them to the 300 and 400 buildings. This was the 5th of November.
On the 8th of November we distributed boxes to the rest of the classes. With the help of the entire NHS we collected the rest of the boxes that we needed to give to teachers. It took another two hours to transport all the boxes to Mr. Hickman’s room, label them with the proper fliers that gave information on the food drive, and then give them to the rest of the classes. We were each carrying five boxes at a time, and it took about two hours still.
The food drive was then officially under way, and it went until November 19th. On the 19th we went around to all the classes with the help of other NHS members who signed up to help and collected all the food. I went a little early (before school was out, because I have a half day) to get a count of which rooms had any food at all so we would know where to send the most people. With about twenty people helping it took around three and half hours to get all the food from each room, count it, and then put it into the large gay lords in the main office where the food was going to be collected by St. Mary’s. Once we were done, we had to break down the boxes and dispose of them. The entire process of collection and clean up took me about five hours.
Overall, I had a great time, and we collected a ton of food for needy families. I learned a lot about how to do food drives, and really how important they are.
Summative of Civic Duty
Civic duty can be defined as many different things, each of which are equally important to the tradition of American generosity. What exactly is civic duty? The definition is a citizen’s responsibility to their country (elcivics.com). Types of civic duty include voting in federal elections, serving in the military, attending jury duty when called upon, obeying the law of the land, and even paying taxes. In addition, one of the most crucial types of civic duty that separates America from other countries in the world is that American citizens donate their time to organizations by volunteering to help causes outside of their own personal gains.
Volunteering, which is the type of civic duty that most people relate with the general meaning of the word, is absolutely vital in today’s society. Volunteering at places like soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and welfare offices helps run organizations that rely solely on the aid of outside volunteers. The help that American citizens provide to non-profit charitable organizations helps those organizations stay above water, and without the volunteers they would most likely fall apart. If that happened, the poor and needy people and families who depend on them would die at least be far worse off if they could not find any alternatives.
Ever since our founding fathers established America in the 1700’s we have based our society on freedom of speech, opinion and other liberties that no other country can compare with. One of our greatest liberties, but is also considered to be a civic duty, is voting (civicfest.org). What better way is there to serve our country and make sure that everything is running smoothly than choosing the leaders of our government. People vote based on who they think will do the country the most good, and most of the times our participation leads to a productive and active government.
Not a lot of people realize that simply following the laws the government has given us is a form of civic duty. Most people do not realize that because they think they follow the laws so they do not have to go to prison, not because they are serving the country. If people did not follow the laws put in place and whether there were consequences or not to their actions, the nation surely falls apart. If you think about following the laws, what would the opposite be? What would it be like if nobody followed the laws? The definition of when people disobey the laws of their government is called civil disobedience. Therefore, by people following the laws, they are not being civilly disobedient, and therefore are performing their civil duty.
There are many other forms of civic duty. One of these is a duty that every American is called to participate in whether they like it or not. Once we turn a legal age we are entered in the pool that will call us to jury duty. America lives and dies in its courts, because the courts are what make the most important decisions that decide what is acceptable and what is not in our society. Therefore, by every person participating on juries we keep the courts working at their maximum efficiency and it keeps them fair to ever prosecutor and defendant (civicfest.org).
Everybody knows of the millions of men and women who have put their lives on the line during our nation’s history, and especially in recent years, to serve in the military. We honor these men and women with the highest level of respect. They go up and above the usual call of duty and it is because of our military personnel that America is considered to be such a super power in the world.
Finally, even though it is a federal and state law to pay taxes, it is one of the most important things that we do to support our nation’s well being. Taxes pay for all of the things that our government does. This is a lot more than just funding bailout programs and other stimulus packages. Taxes pay for roads, prisons, education, infrastructure and much more.
Without the people performing their civic duty America would be nothing like it is today. We hold ourselves to a very high standard of responsibility, and it is because we achieve our expectations that America is able to be so successful.
Works Cited
· (2007). Civics and Civic Responsibilities. December 1, 2010 http://www.elcivics.com/civics_1
· Civicfest.org. (n.d.). Civicfest.org. Retrieved December 2, 2010, from http://www.civicfest.org/
· Fletcher, K. (n.d.). Fulfilling Our Civic Duty. PDF FILE. Retrieved December 2, 2010, from http://www.abigailadamsproject.org/fulfilling_our_civic_duty.pdf
My Civil Service and its Implications on Society
For my civil service I worked with the officers of Boulder Creek’s 2010 chapter of
National Honor Society and St. Mary’s Food Bank to put on a food drive at Boulder Creek High School. At first I did not realize how big the food drive was going to be because all of the food drives I had been a part of before hardly brought in any amount of food compared to what we got. I also did not realize how much time could go into putting on a food drive. When the idea was first presented to me that I could get my government hours from this, I figured there was not a chance that I would get ten hours from it, but in the end ten hours was no problem.
All of the preparation that we had to do was a lot more than I had originally expected. I figured we would get the boxes delivered to us all set up and ready to be given to the classes, and then they would collect the food from the classes and we did not really have to do anything, but that was far from being correct. The time it took to make the posters and make the commercial was more time than I thought I’d spend on the entire project. We still had to put the boxes together, get more boxes, and most importantly collect all the food from the classes and count it. However, in the end I had a blast doing all of it.
The idea of a food drive before we started was a very dull and ineffective way of donating charity to those in need. However, one day in my AP Physics class my teacher Mr. Bennett told the class about how huge a food drive can come to be, based on his experiences at Mountain Ridge High School. Before our food drive, the most cans Boulder Creek had ever collected was no more than 1,500 cans, and Mr. Bennett told us that at Mountain Ridge the school had collected over 60,000 cans a few years ago. When the food bank came to collect their food they had spend an entire day piling food out of the performing arts building because the entire building was full of food. It was at that moment that I realized how huge this food drive could be. In the end, Boulder Creek collected over 3,400 cans of food, but that was pretty good for a new program.
The most important part of the food drive is not how it affected me, or the school, or anybody else who donated food. What matters the most is how it affected those who received all the food that was donated. Thousands of families were able to eat because St. Mary’s Food Bank and Boulder Creek were able to collect the food for them. Instead of having to go hungry they were able to have a meal with their family and have a great holiday season, since most of the food was going to be distributed during and around Thanksgiving. Knowing that something I was a part of was able to make the lives of thousands of people less stressful and provide them with a meal was enough to make the entire experience worthwhile.
I know that more people were affected by the food drive than those who got the food. Everybody who gave a can, or who was involved in putting the food drive together was affected. Knowing that through your efforts you were able to help a needy family makes you feel really good about yourself. It makes you want to keep giving and help as much as you can. The best part is that some people do not need incentives like school competitions to participate either. Many people donate to Food Banks out of the goodness of their heart, and it is when more people like that step up that our society is the best society it can be. When the needy are being helped by the more fortunate the society gains more than you can imagine.
Pictures!
Making my beautiful sign to go on the wall in the 500 building! We made eight large signs, one for 300,400, 500, and 600 buildings, three for the performing arts, and one in the gym. Hanging them up and getting them to stay was the painful part.
The sign in the 400 building! I helped Sam put the stars on it! Our advertising for the food drive is what let students know about when it was, and how to participate.
This sign in the 300 building is an example of how our signs told the dates of the food drive, what is at stake (prizes), and who the food drive is for.
This is one of the snapshots for our commercial, it is all the lucky cans who have found their home at the food bank :)
Some of the boxes that we collected from our NHS members for the rest of the classrooms. We had to label all the boxes with the information about the food drive so that people would not be confused and so the box would be easy to identify.
Me working on some boxes! More than half of the boxes that we had put together that day have already been taken out and provided to classes that had not yet received a box.
If a teacher's door was not unlocked, we had to see if they were in their room or not. When the teacher was not in their room we had to find janitors to open the doors so we could drop off the boxes, and that took a long time.
Every now and then you just need an amazing jumping picture to relieve your stress! Delivering all those boxes can be really tough!
On the day of collecting cans, we had to bring out the boxes from the classrooms, count all the cans, mark down the classes total, and then put all the cans back into a bigger box on the cart. We did this for every class!
I just got really excited when a class finally had a lot of cans! We had a couple dissappointing classes with no cans at all, so this one made me happy. I couldn't help but jump.
Once we filled up our cart, we had to empty all the food into the gaylords! They look huge, but trust me, they fill up quick.
A nice picture of me caught in front of the full gaylords! I had just grabbed a ripped bag of Ramen. That is why they discourage it.
Our awesom Gaylords!!!! Each of these were completely full, and there was one more in the office that we filled up all the way too! Overall we collected over 3,400 cans!
No comments:
Post a Comment