Action Service Project

       At the beginning of November, I began my volunteer work with the St. Vincent de Paul Center. The center has an outreach program with three primary goals. Their goals are children's services, services to the elderly and disabled and services to the homeless and those who are severely struggling financially. The first day I simply met the staff and toured the facility. I officially began my volunteer work on November 10th. As I showed up the the gymnasium in the center, I was not exactly sure what to expect. All I knew for sure based on what the staff members had told me was that I would be assisting in the set up for a luncheon for the homeless on November 12th. On the 10th and 11th I spent a great deal of time doing physical work. Setting up tables, organizing classrooms, folding clothes and moving boxes. Once we got everything set up, we got an orientation from the coordinators on how the luncheon event would actually be run.
       On November 12th, I arrived early in the morning and by 9:00 AM a line had formed at the front door of the de Paul center that looped around the corner into the parking lot. The head coordinator, Katy Murphy began organizing volunteers in the main lobby. According to the sign in rosters, there were approximately two hundred volunteers that morning and many of them had recently signed up to participate. School groups, church organizations, social workers and even a group of workers from the Starbucks across the street had come to participate in serving the homeless. We were assigned jobs by groups and throughout the day, supervisors rotated volunteers into different positions to ensure everyone go the full experience of working with the outreach program. That particular day, I spent some time directed traffic in hallways to serving food to escorting homeless guests. Though we were organized to somewhat systematically move through the facility, we were encouraged to sit down and eat with the homeless guests we were ushering. From that particular experience, to me, it seemed as though the homeless I directly worked with were happier to sit down and have a conversation with someone over a warm meal. Many of them were surprised to receive sleeping bags and winter basics such as new coats and thermal underwear. Many of the homeless went straight for the hygiene services, and many of the homeless men waited anxiously for haircuts. The experience of this luncheon was an eye-opener, in that it destroyed many of society’s stereotypes about the lower class and homeless. Though, statistically, mental illnesses, drug and alcohol problems remains a prevalent problem among the homeless, it most certainly does not represent all of them. I personally feel that the most important feature of this experience is understanding that many of the homeless are regular people like anyone else who now suffer poverty.
       My last day at the St. Xavier de Paul center, I worked in the gymnasium helping organize leftover food and clothes to be donated to other organizations or to be distributed at following events. Though I did not participate in the next event to provide aid to the homeless, I do hope to participate in the future. The outreach program has a lot of resources for assisting the needy and it was truly a rewarding experience to have participated in volunteering with them.

The St. Xavier de Paul center is located at 2145 N. Halsted St. at the southeast corner of the DePaul campus. If anyone is interested in volunteering there, this is their website: www.svdpc.org

The St. Xavier de Paul Center, 2145 N. Halsted