I did my service this past week, at the William Byrd Community House. Unfortunately, I doubt I will be able to say that much about it. Mostly because all we did was rake leaves. And sweep leaves. And bag piles of leaves. I mean, I’m all for being useful, but I’ve been raking leaves at home since I could hold the rake. I wish we had gotten to work on the farmlet itself, or at gotten the chance to interact with the guys in military attire who were also there to volunteer for the morning.That would’ve been interesting. It’s not a huge deal, because I’m sure we were useful. But I did not get much out of that. I got way more out of my first set of volunteer hours at the JRA Splash and Dash, on the James. That was great.
The William Byrd Community House itself was pretty cool. It’s purpose is to essentially feed the hungry, educate children, and take care of the community. It made me a little sad to see, to be perfectly honest, that an entity with those intentions didn’t have nicer equipment and facilities, especially considering all we have here at Richmond. The house was quaint, but with a distinctly neglected air to it. I’m sure this is because lack of funds/time/man power. So I’m glad to have been some help in that area.
The use of a community garden was probably my favorite aspect I saw. They have community plots, their own plots used for growing food and for educating children on where their food actually comes from, as well as running a farmer’s market from May to October. It’s pretty startling to think that some kids don’t know what a piece of produce actually looks like when it’s fresh, or where food products come from. It’s also wonderful to just remind people that every portion of man’s bounty came from the Earth and comes from the Earth. As for the farmers’ market, I cannot rave enough about farmers’ markets. Besides doing that reminding thing I mentioned, they are also community builders and provide fresh food accessibility. I don’t know what this one is like, but if it’s anything like the ones we have back at home, then I’m sure it fulfills its purposed beautifully.
There’s not much else I can say about that volunteering, because we just didn’t have the chance to interact with that many people. What I know about the William Byrd house now, I know because of a brief orientation to the place all the volunteers were given prior to performing the actual service. Ideally, from a volunteer experience, I’d like to be helpful while also interacting with people and things in ways I haven’t had the chance to before. This experience was basically just chores.
However, the final project is service, in a way. It is performing a service, if done correctly. Since we are working on the proposals for it, I can’t help but think of it when given the prompt of community-based service learning. What’s more interactive than making a map for the community? This year has really opened my eyes to all the wonderfulness that is the James River, and now I can’t wait to open the eyes of the greater community of Richmond, if possible. As Ralph White said, people need to have a sense of their roots. In this day and age, few people will go out of their way to find these roots without some sort of facilitating factor. Having something that can tell you exactly where to go if you want to swim, or have a picnic, or hike, or kayak can be that facilitating factor, I believe. I’m picturing it as an app for smartphones, and if it were to become that, there could even be a notification system for events, like the JRA Splash and Dash, or the mens’ clothing festival thing we ran into on our field trip to Belle Isle, along with how to be a part of them. There have been so many times I’ve just not bothered to do something because it was way too much effort to figure out the logistics, or didn’t know it was happening until it was too late. That’s even happened with going to the James with friends. We didn’t know where to park, or where we could rent boats, or where there was a place to swim, so we just skipped the whole excursion. If we, Earth Lodge and the GIS class, can manage to figure out those logistics for people, I think that would be a great service.