On Saturday October 25^th, I attended Stockton’s Make a Difference Day. Make a Difference Day happens once a semester and is run by the Office of Service Learning. There were several volunteer opportunities to choose from that day. I decided to volunteer at the Community Food Bank to help pack boxes of food to give to those in need.

When we got to the Food Bank, the lady who was in charge for the day greeted us. The first thing she had us do was stuff envelopes with the Food Bank’s newsletters. It was not a hard task but it was a bit tedious. The group I was with decided to divide up the work assembly line style. One half of the group would put a flier in the newsletter and fold it up. The other group would then seal the newsletters shut. I was a part of the first group until the sealing group started to slow down and I offered to help them out. We folded and sealed newsletters for about ninety minutes until the lady came back and told us we could pack boxes now.

The group and I went into the back of the building where the warehouse was. In there were hundreds of cans and boxes full of food. The people who were leading the Warehouse Shift led us to some tables and told us what to do. They said that each person would be in charge of putting one food item in the box as the box moves down the table. I was in charge of putting the canned green beans in the box. By the end of the shift we packed several hundred boxes and we all had to go back to the campus. I enjoyed working at the Food Bank because I liked the fact that I was helping people receive a good holiday dinner.

On September 27^th, I attended the Animal Shelter Service Project. The Honors program ran the project and it was a one-time meet up. I joined about eight other girls, to help volunteer at the Atlantic County Animal Shelter in Pleasantville, New Jersey. When we got there via car pool, the woman who was in charge of the shelter greeted us. She was very kind and gave each of us specific jobs to do. Some people had to clean the kennels, some had to mop the floors and some had to clean the windows. As for my job, I partnered up with another girl to work on sterilizing and filling the litter boxes.

The task was not too hard. My partner and I decided that she would sterilize while I would fill. She would sterilize the litter boxes in this dishwasher like machine, where the boxes would be steamed with chemicals for several minutes. After they were done, I would then take them to the litter room and fill them up to the right amount. While the job was simple, it took a while. I ended up going through three large containers of litter in order to fill all the boxes.

After we were done with the litter boxes, we were allowed to go into the cat room and take the kittens out to play with. The kittens were very cute and lively and would keep jumping onto the volunteers. I then decided to check out the dogs. There were mainly pit bulls in the kennels and they were very loud with their barking. However, they were very sweet. They would press their bodies up against the fence so they can be petted. I played with the dogs for a while until it was time to go. The woman in charge thanked us for helping out and we all took a picture in front of the shelter.

On September 6^th, I attended the Day of Service funded by the Office of Student Development. The Day of Service takes place once per semester. When I went to the event in the morning I decided I wanted to volunteer at the South Jersey Horse Farm. The farm takes in abused and neglected horses and nurses them back to health. When I got to the farm after the twenty-minute bus ride, I was surprised at the amount of horses that were there: about a dozen or so. They looked like they had been at the farm for a long time because they all looked healthy. The woman who was in charge was named Ellen and she was a very nice lady with a huge passion for horses.

The first thing I had to do at the farm was a move a tent to another paddock so the horses would have something to rest in. It wasn’t a hard task. The tent was somewhat light and then all we had to do was anchor it to the ground with pegs.   The next thing I did was replace the plastic holders for the electric fence. I thought it would be difficult but I only had to change the broken ones and another girl helped me so it was not bad.

Afterwards, I got to spend some with the horses. They were very approachable and I got to feed them the apple cores I had leftover from the lunch they gave us. I also talked with Ellen for a bit and I asked her some questions about the farm. She told me that she had dedicated her life to this farm and wants to be able to get all the horses adopted into good homes. After I was done talking with her, we had to go back to Stockton. We all said good-bye to Ellen and the other volunteers and got on the bus. As we rode back, I smiled to myself thinking of how we all made a difference that day for the horses.