Wednesday July 24th
I think that Wednesday was a very pivotal day for me in my
experience volunteering at the Women’s shelter. I woke up refreshed,
revitalized, and ready to work. But upon getting to the shelter I was at a
loss. At 11:30 I went to find my mentee and as usual found her in the
kindergarten working on some arts and crafts project the Brazilian volunteers
had started with the teens. This was absolutely fine. She was happy and excited
about the craft, which was a great change to see, but the woman in charge of the
other volunteers and the other volunteers themselves made me feel invisible,
worthless, and unnecessary. Long story short I felt uncomfortable and
unwelcomed. I decided to speak up about it though because what good was I doing
if I had nothing to do and the girl didn’t want to be mentored. I went right to
Shiran who was more than willing to listen to my issue. She told me that she
too hadn’t had the best experience with the other volunteers and their
coordinator, especially when it came to the mentoring. She explained that she
really wanted the program to come about, that the girls originally seemed
really excited, and that she didn’t want me to feel like I wasn’t being
beneficial to the shelter and the girls themselves. I was comforted by her
sympathy and motivation to make it work but inside I was definitely freaking
out. Shiran went to talk to my mentee of the day and I was completely ecstatic
when she returned to talk to me. Shiran said that my mentee really did enjoy
spending time with me and liked that she got the one on one time and didn’t
want to give it up. But the other volunteers kept putting her in a hard spot
because they would start these projects but not finish them when they were
supposed to so she would be mid project and have to stop when I came in. Luckily
we were able to settle on the idea that if that is the case from now on, her
and I will continue the project just in a separate room just the two of us.
When Shiran told me about the girl’s reaction a spark went
off in my mind. All of a sudden my brain was flooding with ideas of things I
could to actually connect with my mentees and leave them with happy memories by
the time my volunteering ended. I am so excited about these ideas! After my
talk with Shiran I went to help my mentee with the craft still in the group
setting. It was fine and I still left feeling a tad out of place but at the end
of the session I asked both my mentees if it was okay if I plan the activities
for the next week (normally the policy is that they choose but I felt that it
wasn’t working as I wanted it to) and I was happy to hear “yes” from both of
them.
The rest of the day went as normal. In the afternoon Hannah
and I attempted, and somewhat succeeded at teaching our now 4 person group,
about family trees. Our original intention was to teach them words like sister
and brother in English but the kids still with us have very little interest in
learning English. Luckily, when Shiran came in to translate it sparked their
interests and they cooperated with our idea of drawing our families. Because we
are female, our planned activities tend to me on the girly side. But, we have
been working on that and thought the family tree idea was a nice middle ground.
Unfortunately though despite what we plan, the one boy in our group never wants
to participate. It makes me so upset that we haven’t been able to really engage
him in anything other than playing games. I can tell he is hurt and I just wish
I could communicate with him or knew more to help. Instead of doing our planned
activity though I plated monopoly with him. Let me just start this by saying
the kids in our group love to play by their own rules. And because we can’t
understand what they are saying, they often get away with it. Thus, I embarked
on a game of monopoly where I couldn’t read the cards, where there were no
property cards, and where I basically just tried to understand him to the best
of my ability. Luckily, I caught some of his tricks and I think he was taken a
little of guard but I got to see him smile when I kept having to pay for the
dolphin show or whatever I kept landing on a dozen times and it was nice to see
that he was at least enjoying a little bit of group time.
Our Wednesdays always end with gardening but shortly after
going outside I realized that Hannah, our spur of the moment volunteer, the
gardener, and I were all out there with 4 kids which was unnecessary. So
instead I went to our typical Internet location and started to work on our
group presentation. At the end of the day we all went home, made dinner, and
then had group. Our group session was about the costs and benefits for everyone
affected by our volunteering (i.e. us, our organizations, our families, our
Hillels, etcs.). We started the session off with a discussion about which
option would you by if both were the same price but with A you just got a shirt
and with B you got a shirt and someone in some 3rd world country
also got a shirt. Being my somewhat selfish self said it would depend on which
shirt I liked better. If the shirt in B didn’t look good on me than I wouldn’t
spend the money. But if I liked both obviously I would go with B because it had
the added benefit. I used my purchasing of TOMS as an example. I didn’t buy the
shoes because they donated a pair to someone else. I bought them because I
liked the style, color, comfort, and ease of the shoes. The donation aspect was
simply another motivator to spend the money. Our group got into a little but of
a disagreement about these choices though. Despite the fact that when you go to
buy clothes 99% of the time you don’t think about how your purchase could take
down an entire economy that is what the discussion came to. Those in favor of
option A used the primary basis that if you buy option B you are taking a job
away from someone in the developing country because instead of building a
factory or allowing them to buy from their own suppliers we are simply just
handing them free shirts that will last only a short amount of time in
comparison. The debate and heatedness only continued into the 2nd
portion of the program when we analyzed our own costs and benefits. The program
was definitely one that made me think and reflect on what I thought of
volunteering but I felt a tad defeated by the end of it. I was simply happy to
pack and go to bed when it was all over.
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