Upward Bound: A Community Analysis

Service is a word defined by one who is willing to give his or her time and effort for the well being of their community or others in need of help. Everyone experiences some sort of service in their lifetime whether it was by their friends or family and it doesn’t take the brightest mind to realize that sometimes one person is just not enough. As my living conditions changed, so did the way I looked at service. I was born in Bangladesh and lived there for my first 11 years. My parents were the first generation to go to college and have professional jobs, so we had a fairly good living conditions here. I didn’t really have a need for service because I had everything I needed and more. Having everything I needed, I failed to understand the importance

I did my very first community service here during my 9th grade summer. This community service was hosted by LA Food Bank where my Upward Bound peers and I went to a warehouse full of food and selectively packed them for about 4 hours. These packed food included vegetables such as broccoli and fruits such as peach which were being headed straight to the homeless throughout the LA county. After the hard work we found out that we packed 67,000 pounds of food that will be able to feed hundreds of people. I felt very proud hearing that we were able to help some many people and it motivated me to do more. During my 10th grade summer, I participated in this event again and another additional event where I made sandwiches for those who were hungry in the streets. Taking part in these services brought back a lot of memories from Bangladesh of many people living in poverty ridden slums, something that I ignored when I was living there. I felt great guilt and sorrow inside as I realized how fortunate I was to have a caring family and friends who helped me go through the transition and I was ready to do my part to help

I’m very confident that many of the work that I put in was helpful to either the community or those who were less fortunate and I’m proud of each one of them. It was ironically due to the change in my lifestyle that really pushed me to think differently and act accordingly. When someone feels great after doing something, they will come back to do it again. So, we need to expose students to community service more effectively in order to allow them to understand the importance of service for the community or the needy that will ultimately lead to much more volunteers. This can be done by getting teachers from core classes such as English to promote these service oriented clubs or holding events in school that would do community service or even taking students to field trips for community service. I was able to expand volunteers by making announcements for community service and getting people to join our club. In the end, you won’t know whether you like it, until you try