Cure Serious Wounds
Today I was able to experience one of the most rewarding voluneer opportunities I've had in a very long time. I took part in UAB's Into The Streets service day, and I'm feeling good. It doesn't look very sincere in type, but this is the genuine emotion, baby.
I signed up for the largest worksite, AIDS Alabama Site #1, which turned out to have 45 people assigned to it. The community had a church building donated to them by a convent that no longer used it in 1995, and it quickly became the storage space for all the "donated items" that the community recieved. Over the next 11 years, this stuff accumulated to fill the entire building. This place is a huge sanctuary building and a balcony, and the residents had already sorted through the stuff to take home any useable items yesterday.
Our job was to take these items--now we're talking refridgerators, washers and dryers, sofas, tables, you name it--and throw them in the dumpster. At first, it was startling; but once I figured out that it really was junk, and would be too much trouble to give to anyone else, I was chucking old TVs and throwing away big, unidentifiable things with the best of them. I even got a hold of a dolly and carted out 3 fridges, with the help of a navigator. In only 2 hours, we had the entire building cleaned out and everyone had worked hard. We had filled the trailer-sized dumpster with stuff, and there was another dumpster load out beside it. It was quite an undertaking.
Then we headed back to the campus for pizza and a T-shirt. This was not the highlight of the day.
I signed up for the largest worksite, AIDS Alabama Site #1, which turned out to have 45 people assigned to it. The community had a church building donated to them by a convent that no longer used it in 1995, and it quickly became the storage space for all the "donated items" that the community recieved. Over the next 11 years, this stuff accumulated to fill the entire building. This place is a huge sanctuary building and a balcony, and the residents had already sorted through the stuff to take home any useable items yesterday.
Our job was to take these items--now we're talking refridgerators, washers and dryers, sofas, tables, you name it--and throw them in the dumpster. At first, it was startling; but once I figured out that it really was junk, and would be too much trouble to give to anyone else, I was chucking old TVs and throwing away big, unidentifiable things with the best of them. I even got a hold of a dolly and carted out 3 fridges, with the help of a navigator. In only 2 hours, we had the entire building cleaned out and everyone had worked hard. We had filled the trailer-sized dumpster with stuff, and there was another dumpster load out beside it. It was quite an undertaking.
Then we headed back to the campus for pizza and a T-shirt. This was not the highlight of the day.