Kelsey: Service Learning Log 1

Volunteering at the Denver Rescue Mission, I worked the dinner shift where I was able to help with household-type work as well as serving and cleaning up after the people who used the services provided to them by the Denver Rescue Mission. When I first arrived, I locked my purse away in a closet in the “day room” where the food seemed to be pre-prepared. I was then instructed by one of the men in charge, also in the recovering alcoholics program, that I should not give out any personal information such as my last name, where I go to school, or even give the people visiting the Denver Rescue Mission any money. As he was telling me this, we walked upstairs to dump bins of garbage into the dumpster. He and I were helped by a boy my age who was also volunteering. We emptied two large bins of trash -- old food, boxes, socks-- into the dumpster, but remains of spoiled food and broken crackers stayed caked at the bottom. We then went downstairs to retrieve more trash, where the man who was working there informed me that someone had used the laundry bin as a trash, so we then had to fish trash out of the bin (along with some dirty socks) and then dumped the remaining trash onto to the floor of the laundry room for someone to sweep up later. The two men then went to finish unloading the trash, while I went to wash my hands. In the kitchen, where the hand-washing sink is located, I met a young man who works in the kitchen and started a conversation with him. He talked to me about school and how he is trying to become a police officer and then opened up and told me outright that he started doing hard drugs when he was twelve-years-old and is recovering from his experience with those. He was wearing a cross and was very nice to me, informing me that if anyone at all bothered me to tell him.

Next, I went back into the day room to retrieve an apron, which all the volunteers wore, and took my place in the conveyor-belt of helpful volunteers waiting for the masses to arrive so we could provide them with steaming trays of food for their meals. Five in at a time, we were told. One volunteer, the mother of the boy I emptied the trash with, stood at the door with a clicker to count the number of people who came in for dinner. The line started at the door to the dinning area and went all the way up the stairs. The trays we handed them were silver and crooked, partially filled with chicken wings, squash or green beans, and french fries. Behind me, there were volunteers dishing salad and one mug with either water or tea for each person. We were told to look out for people coming back for seconds and that we should not let them get any more than one serving. People of all different types came through the door-- some wore suits, others were wearing multiple layers that were ragged and dirty-- and most were carrying many bags with them. One man was carrying so much and was so nervous to set his things down and leave them for a minute to get food that I had to carry his tray for him through the line and to a table because he could not carry it himself while holding so much. Some people while eating minded their own business, never looking up or talking to anyone. Others socialized, met people sitting at their table, or talked to friends they seemed to know well.

My next job was to bus tables. I was instructed to wait before taking a tray to make sure the patron hadn’t gotten up to get water. If they were sitting with an empty tray for too long, I was also instructed to ask them if they were finished and to take their tray. I carried around a dirty rag with me that had been soaking in blue water to use to wipe the tables after the diners had finished eating. At first I was timid, but soon I learned to look for those who had finished so I could take their trays. However, there were many people assigned to bus tables, so work was pretty scarce. While I stood waiting, I talked with other volunteers or listened to conversations that the patrons were having. Some of the men talked to me, asking me how I was or saying thank you after I picked up their trays. One started asking me personal questions, such as where I went to school and whether or not I was in high school. Some of the patrons were not as nice as others-- they almost seemed indignant when we offered to help them. Others were very opinionated, using only chop sticks to eat their meal and asking for so much extra salad that the women volunteering brought over a baby-crib-sized tub of lettuce and piled his tray a half a foot high with salad.

When the last patrons had come in, around 9, we began stacking chairs and cleaning tables. Volunteers that hadn’t spoken started talking to one another. There was one other girl from DU volunteering so we talked about Project Homeless Connect, our majors, and the overall experience we had that night. She had done different work, sweeping and mopping in the day room, before coming into the dining hall to help serve food. Some other women were middle aged and talked to us about school and the weather. Everyone was cheerful and I could tell they felt good about what they had just done. We all walked out together to our cars smiling and saying goodbye at the end of the night.

My overall feelings during this experience were a bit up-and-down. First, I was very scared to go downtown by myself to a place I had never been to before. I tried to schedule different times when classmates would be going, as well, but it proved impossible to do so. Driving downtown to the Denver Rescue Mission, I saw lines of homeless people across the corner from the location of the Denver Rescue Mission and wondered if they would be our patrons later on. I was timid about being alone and also didn’t want to seem pretentious to anyone since I drive a nice car and had a purse with me and was wearing jewelry. Walking in, I wasn’t sure what I’d be doing, and when I started emptying the trash I wondered if I would be interacting with anyone coming in to eat. When the man instructing us on how to empty the trash told me not to give out any of my information and when I locked my purse in the day room, I felt very anxious about what would happened when I did, in fact, come into contact with those visiting for dinner. However, when they started coming in to eat, I didn’t feel so nervous about their actions as much as my own. I was very self conscious the whole time, wondering if I was acting in a way that might offend them or make them. When the one man started asking me about what school I went to, I found myself fumbling to a circumvent the truth. I told him I wasn’t in school but waiting to see if I’d go to college. I felt awful having to lie, but I was not going to ignore the advice given to me by the people who work with these patrons night-after-night.

Overall, the experience was fulfilling and relieving. I was so nervous to volunteer there, but most I was nervous for Project Homeless Connect. This community service was much shorter, so it provided me with a small introduction to who I would be working with the next day. It served to calm my nerves and made me feel like I not only helped these people have a nice meal in doors and provide them with a good environment to meet with friends, but I also felt happy to have gotten over my fears and my ignorant presupposed opinions about what kind of people the homeless are. It was a great addition to my experience with service learning, and I am very happy I got to volunteer. My time spent volunteering at the Denver Rescue Mission also helped me academically because it added another dimension to schools besides classroom learning. The experience that night really brought together this writing class for me. We spent the whole quarter preparing to actually interact with the homeless by talking about the homeless, reading about them, and finally using what we had learned and our newly formed opinions to actually go meet some of the homeless to wrap up everything we had learned. It was a great way to prepare for Project Homeless Connect, to tie together things we had learned in the class, to make us more well-rounded and beneficial to the community, and to help us with our own qualitative research for our papers. The most valuable thing I will take from this class is my experience with these people, how it made me feel, and how it affirmed my positive opinions about the homeless.