India Sullivan Community Service Practicum 11/14/2013 Reflective Essay When I first signed up to take the community service

e practicum course this semester, I did so grudgingly. I have not had many positive experiences with community service in the past, and I was not looking forward to getting my hands dirty again. But through my community service this semester I have learned there are several steps to the process of becoming a volunteer and internalizing your community service work. Much like an artist painting a picture, each service project you participate in to better your community is like brush stroke on an artists canvas. The painting, after a while, becomes more personal, as if it is a part of you. I set out to find an organization which I had not yet served in my years of community service. In high school my parents forced me to help serve at a food bank, which I did not enjoy. When I moved to Charlotte for college, I participated in Habitat for Humanity builds, fundraisers for cancer, and soup kitchens. These projects were all just the foundations of my painting, laying down the ground work. None of this community service really became personal until I started my work with Project HALO. Project HALO is a non-profit, no-kill animal shelter and sanctuary in Charlotte, NC. The organization is entirely run out of two homes rather than a shelter like the Human Society, and unlike nearly all of the animal shelters in Charlotte, Project Halo has a strict no-kill policy. This means no matter whether the animal is adopted or not, they promise to take care of the animal, foster the animal in homes, and to treat the animal as if it were their own pet

for the rest of the animals life. The fact that the shelter was entirely volunteer run and donation based, as well as the no-kill policy, was what drew me to work with Project Halo. My first event which I volunteered with Project Halo was an adoption day in Birkdale Village, a thriving strip mall which draws quite a crowd on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I was unsure of what to expect when I arrived, but once the dogs started to pile out of the van, I couldnt contain my excitement any longer. I have always been a sucker for animals, especially those who are friendly. Amongst the dogs which were brought to the adoption day was a recent rescue named Riley. Riley is a 2 year old pocket lab, which is to say that he is a lab mix which was significantly malnourished in his puppyhood, not allowing him the nutrition he needed to grow into a full sized lab. Project Halo was notified of this dog in need when a 16 year old girl found him stuck in a briar patch. He had an embedded collar, meaning he had a pronged training collar which had not grown while he grew, forcing the collar to dig into his neck and the skin to grow around it. This was one of the worst embedded collars I had ever seen. The skin where the collar had been was torn open, rotting, and infected with maggots. When one hears maggots and rotting flesh one thinks of death, already dead things that were once living, but this was the state we found the dog Riley, a living creature which had been abandoned and left for dead. The pictures certainly were not for the faint of heart, showing close-ups of his neck and ribs. Miraculously Riley survived once Project Halo took him to a vet immediately after finding him, and a week later Riley was sitting before me at the adoption day. This was the first significant moment in which I found myself internalizing my volunteer work for Project Halo, painting deep blues and purples on my community service painting for the sadness I felt upon seeing Rileys condition.

I took pictures during the adoption day, and after I edited the pictures, I found myself showing the dogs off at every chance I was given. I delighted in the editing of the pictures, watching the dogs come to life in a photograph through their eyes. After spending a few hours with these dogs I had already felt a fondness for them that can only come from compassion. This was a feeling I had not felt in my experience with community service in the past. Being able to photograph the animals, and in turn helping them get adopted, made me feel as if I was valuable to this group of pups and the people who were taking care of them, adding yet another color to my community service painting, strokes of yellow and orange! Not long after the first adoption day was another weekend-long event at the NASCAR Track. This event was much less dog oriented and more donation focused. We set up a booth at the venders row outside of the racetrack with three goals: 1) to raise encourage adopting animals instead of shopping for them, 2) to encourage spaying and neutering as a preventative measure and 3) to raise money for Project Halo. After my first encounter with Project Halo, I was excited about this new endeavor. I found myself drawing people into our booth, talking to them about the dangers of not spaying and neutering, reciting a brief speech about Project Halos mission, and before long I was talking about the organization as if it were my own. I used terms such as we and our. Project Halos goals became my goals, their work was my work. The transformation to internalization was complete, and I was identifying with the work I was doing for the first time in my life. My community service painting, with each brush stroke of community service, was coming together, but far from complete. Internalization of responsibility creates community. Community service is better served when you are a part of and passionate about the community which you serve. Being surrounded by passionate people does not always make you passionate, but an internalization of the work

you are doing will paint a beautiful portrait of compassion, inspiration, and gratitude. For me, that moment began with Riley and was continued at the NASCAR event. At this event, I served two of the three days, nearly 20 hours, and in that time I managed to help raise over $600 for Project Halo from talking to possible donors at venders row. Once we internalize the responsibility, we become powerhouses for good, unstoppable in our building up our community. As I continue to paint my community service picture, I begin to enjoy and anticipate with excitement each new activity which will add another brush stroke to my masterpiece. Each new stroke brings me closer to my completion of my work, but the completion of my community service does not end with this class. The artwork I am creating now will end with my semester, however, each new experience is an opportunity for a new piece, a new way to help serve and love the community in which I live.