The first Service Learning project that I had the pleasure in taking part of was the 11th Annual Day of Service. The Day of Service is an event here at Stockton where students and volunteers from around the area can participate in various community services. I got the opportunity to help of the Club Water Watch in their goal to clean the campus grounds. The project consisted of just over 30 people, 11 of which were from my dorm. The group was split up into small teams to efficiently and effective clean the campus grounds. Almost every member that participated in the event was happy to help and peppy while doing so. Our task was to clean up liter around the campus center. Some groups did the freshman housing area and others did the academic building. Despite the fact that it was 85 degrees and humid, when everyone in my group was done we took one last glance around what we cleaned and smiled.
The most important thing about what we did was the reflection. During the reflection we discussed ways to prevent the amount of garbage that we found. The most common piece of trash were cigarette butts. The gazeboes are the designated area for smoking and there are just the right amount of gazeboes around the school that if you have to smoke you don’t have to walk too far to do so. Adding more gazeboes is the not the solution because most of the cigarettes butts were found around the gazeboes. Our group came up with multiple solutions one of them being to have bigger areas to put the used cigarette butts. Most of the butts are surrounding the trash cans so this should drastically reduce the amount of liter.
I can honestly say that my overall experience was fun, interactive, and most importantly rewarding. The feeling that you get when you have accomplished something meaningful is like no other. Thanks to my friends that helped clean the school I had a blast and never even thought of the cleaning we were doing as a chore. Helping Water Watch made me appreciate our campus and made me more grateful towards other people who clean our school on a daily basis. I plan on helping out Water Watch in the near future and trying to make an even bigger difference.