“We need more kindness, more compassion, more joy, and more laughter. I definitely want to contribute to that.” Ellen Degenes
As a little girl, my mother has always taught me that giving is a good thing especially to the homeless or to even people that wake up in the morning with no food to eat or even clothing to put on their backs. So when my professor gave the class a service project that was one of the first things that came into my head. I didn’t quite know my exactly plan on how I was going to be donating to or even volunteering to help with anything. But, when Dr. Soldani told us her story on how she helps out with donating food to the veteran’s village a little light flicked in my head. With Thanksgiving right around the corner, two others and myself from the class decided that we were going to cook pans of food for the Veteran’s Village.
On Thanksgiving morning, the two classmates and I all gathered at my house to cook two pans of green beans, one pan of cornbread, and we also brought desert. We knew that other people were bringing food so we didn’t want to bring too much of the same thing. The opportunity persisted when I was sad I couldn’t go home to be with my family because my job required me to work. There’s someone out here that’s doesn’t have a family or is fortunate enough to get even to their family who isn’t local. I didn’t bother me that I had to cook because I knew that we were going to fill bellies with joy. I’ve meet so many people from different places and even two people that were from my hometown Miami. It felt good knowing that many people appreciate everything you did to make them happy and help them enjoy their thanksgiving that I wanted to come back and do it again. Which we did, this time was a much smaller crowd not a lot of veterans (although I found out everybody who stay in veteran village isn’t a veteran.)
I got to meet a few, this guy (I don’t know his name) but he says he is a dentist, and this guy namedAlex (who is a veteran). After serving the food and dessert we got deep into conversation with Alex, and one thing I can say I walked away with was the wisdom of knowledge. You never know what you may encounter in life that can change your whole life at an instant. I can honestly say that this is one experience that I’ll never forget because it actually made my semester more interesting, and anxious to even do more activities with the people from the Veteran’s Village. And I thank you Dr. Soldani for allowing me to experience the different things and learning how there’s people out in this world that are actually struggling more than me and you’ll never notice.
