Service Project Report
We need more kindness, more compassion, more joy, more laughter. I definitely want to contribute to that. - Ellen DeGeneres
For my service project I decided to give to the homeless. As you may know there are plenty of homeless people in Tallahassee some are traveling through going to another city while others are simply scared to leave or been here all of their lives. I usually go around giving change or sometimes buying someone a burger at the Tennessee Street McDonalds near fsu campus but I wanted to do something special or at least a little more remotely helpful to all.
I decided to go to Walmart and buy ten cases of water, and I got 3 big boxes of chips from my job. Then one of my friends also gave the idea of getting clothes so we gathered a ton of clothes from all of my local car friends and then I gathered some from the local super smash bros gaming community. My girlfriend also gave the bright idea of making sandwiches with the water also and including fruit to make a complete meal. So after hours of sandwich making and paper bags we were ready to hit the streets! We first started by driving by the Walmart on west Tennessee there was a vet there and we were able to give him some clothes and a meal of course and he was very nice and thankful. Then across the street at the inland was a group of people with a dog all travelling in an old van trying to get gas money to go to Seattle.
They were really nice and cool we shared a few stories and then I gave them all a meal and then put $20 in their tank. With us being half way through the day it was great to actually start making ground driving on Tennessee and stopping at locations to drop off food and water, one person was kind of reluctant about extra clothes saying “too many layers for this weather haha”, but there were also some that were really excited about having a fresh t-shirt and shorts to lounge around in.
After a couple of hours we met a cool guy named Dan he was a vet that was also into yoga and MMA we were able to share quite a few laughs because we both enjoyed watching a show called rick and morty. So we were making references the entire time and soon after he actually gave me a short lesson on Yoga! It was great to learn something so nice and relaxing and then short after I told him about how I trained a little bit in juijitsu and that he should definitely should drop by and check out our gym and he was so stoked about the thought of it. Then he also gave us a tip and told us to go down to Lake Ella because plenty of people are there because of the shade and how peaceful it is.
So we jumped back in my car went to lake Ella with hands full of bags of treats. We then walked around the park passing out stuff to many of the homeless people sitting outside and were able to give everyone a nice cold water and food. So many people were happy about what we were doing and it really did touch our hearts we were able to have an impact and give smiles to most within the city especially during this extremely hot weather. The many characters and people that I met during this experience was great and I would surely do it again. I learned many things and stories from people just by walking around and talking to them and I hope I had an impact on others to do the same or try to contribute to the community around us. I also plan on signing up for the habitat fo humanity project and helping more people in the future. I think it’s a great program that will help people get outside, learn some trades and actually contribute to the homeless problem that we have for others because I noticed that there were actual families living on the streets and this is very sad to know. So if building a home for someone that doesn’t have one at all help sign me right up! If we can all chip in and help others this world will be a better place for us all to live in.
