Service Learning

Friday was my first day volunteering at the Tacoma Rescue Mission, which is located downtown Tacoma.  My roommate is an anthropology major and is working on an ethnography for her honors, so she volunteers there over 20 hours a week.  I thought it would be a perfect opportunity for me to get to know what her deal was all about.  

The Tacoma Rescue Mission is a nonprofit, christian affiliated mission house.  They "provide emergency services such as shelter and food to the homeless or hurting; offering self sufficiency programs to help lift a person from poverty and break the chains of addiction; support prevention programs and share our christian faith" (Tacoma Rescue Mission).  There are 8 different facilities which offer different services.  My roommate and I worked in the Family shelter which provides emergency housing and meals for families and single women.  

My roommate would often talk to us about her volunteering at the shelter.  The basic idea I was given was most of the families living in the shelter were black, and distanced themselves from her because they thought she was staff.  With this in mind and because they are "homeless" I figured they would be low income families, with little or no education and poor hygiene. While I was even getting ready for the day, my other roommate told me that my clothing looked too nice and that I should change.  Knowing that most of my clothing is "nicer," I opted to borrow my roommates clothes who volunteers at the shelter. Yet, when I first arrived at the shelter the first youth I met was a white girl.  And while in the office, more youth were hanging around talking about brining their Playstations out, while texting on their phone, or listening to their mp3 player.  Their clothing also didn't match with my ideas of "homelessness."  If I had met the youth at any other time, I would have never known they were homeless and living in a shelter. 

The rest of my day was spent attending to the youth while they worked on creating fruit salads.  A few of the youth took a liking to me and I was able to get to know them better while making paper airplanes.  They just came off as any other child the age of 7 0r 15.  I felt like I was back at my camp I volunteer at yearly, helping with projects and teaching games.  The only problem I ever had was the other volunteers would distance themselves from both me and my roommate.  At one point I went up to another white male volunteer to ask him a question, and he ignored me completely.  Even the director of the other shelter (white male) paid us  no attention.  If it wasn't for the youth's liking towards me, I wouldn't want to return.