by Afsara Ahona
From the time I entered high school, I was an active member of a community service organization called buildOn. I was absolutely spellbound by this organization’s goals. buildOn not only works locally to involved students in service, but also globally by building schools in developing nations. My entire high school experience revolved around buildOn until the end of sophomore year. I was deeply affected by their departure and decided that I must find a way to continue with service—- that was how my very first service project was set up.
A friend and I were particularly dedicated and decided to start our own service club. Getting started was very hard. So many things were needed to start a new club, especially a service club. First, we had to decide whether or not we could handle the responsibility considering the fact that we were both going to be juniors after the summer was over. We came to the conclusion that service was just too big a part of ourselves to give up. Second, we had to get teachers to sponsor us and be there for after school meetings as well as find teachers who would be willing to give up Saturdays to help monitor us. We had to find a room to host our meetings in school and a make a new club name that would sound appealing to the students. Yet, the title of our club also had to sound professional enough, i.e. for email accounts, give us credibility with potential community partners. Then we had to find partners willing to use our club as volunteers. Luckily, my partner and I had a list of Upper Darby based organizations who wanted our service club to help them throughout the year.
Over the summer my friend and I joined SYWC. On our last day at SYWC, we were able to meet and make our very own service partner, Asian Arts Initiative. Asian Arts Initiative was having a block party to commemorate the finish of their mural project. My friend and I got up the nerve to ask the director about an opportunity to help set up the block party after discussing the topic during SYWC’s celebratory lunch.
To our great surprise, the director was very approachable. She listened to our proposal and thought it was a great idea. I struggled to hide my joy and remain somewhat professional even though I felt so young. The director gave us the email addresses of the people we needed to contact and our first project was finally set up.
On the day of the project we had more than 40 people show up to help. AAI had many jobs for us to do. It was more than enough to keep our volunteers busy. They were able to enjoy the festivities as well. Some volunteers had the job of playing the audience for various performances going on. Others were vendors at some of the small stands. Most of us were working in the back building furniture and painting. Members from what used to be buildOn and new members of UD Service Club bonded over the struggles of putting together tables and chairs. It was a first project that lived up to my expectations and gave us the confidence to keep going.
SYWC 