Elizabeth Schmidt

Second Blog Post

On October 18, 2014, I completed my second volunteer activity as required by the Honors Program. The activity I participated in was ‘An Afternoon of Service’ hosted by McKenzie. It began at 12pm and ended a little past 3pm, and it took place in Meeting Room 5 in the Campus Center.

The large room was made up of four round tables and some folding chairs at each one. Every table was a station, and at each station there was a different service project that I and the rest of the volunteers would be completing during the three hours of our ‘Afternoon of Service’ with the Honors Program. We each started out at a certain project and were allowed to switch tables whenever we felt like we needed a change in crafts. Some of the activities included teddy bear making for children in hospitals, wreath making for families’ homes in the Ronald McDonald House organization, and making pumpkin decorations out of construction paper.

I began at a table that was making dog toys out of old t-shirts for animal shelters, an activity that I have experience with since I did it once before at the Honors Overnight Experience back in June of this year. This was fairly easy, as we merely had to cut strips of material and then braid three pieces together to create a rope toy. When my friends and I had exhausted the bag of donated clothes at the dog toy station, we moved on to the peanut butter and jelly sandwich making activity. Here we helped bag up the sandwiches and clean up the station once all of the bread slices had been used. Since we had run out of supplies at this station, we all moved onto the coloring book station, where we spent the rest of our afternoon coloring pictures for soldiers and creating coloring books for children in hospitals.

This service project was very rewarding, as I was able to spend time with my friends on a Saturday afternoon while doing crafts and helping to make someone else’s day a little brighter. If there is ever another ‘Afternoon of Service’ available, I will definitely make a point to join in on the volunteering and help out again.