Final thoughts on service experience

The video below explains what I learned from my service experience.

Final Thought on Carnegie Volunteering

My final thoughts on the Carnegie Center are explained in the video above.

Final Thoughts on the Carnegie Center

After three months, my time volunteering at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning has come to an end. Here is a video with some of my final thoughts and reflections on my overall experience with this service site. 

Final Thoughts

Sadly, my time working with the Carnegie Center has come to an end. It was a great semester working some really interesting events there. To conclude my Service Learning experience, I have given some of my final thoughts in the video below.

The Carnegie Center: A Final Reflection

The Carnegie Center Logo

I have volunteered at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning for about three months now. As this experience is drawing to a close, I thought I'd share some thoughts about the center itself and also volunteer organizations in general. Because I have had only limited experience with this organization and indeed with organized volunteer groups in general, I would like to preface my opinion with the confession that I am no expert. This being said, here is my video reflection. 

 I fell in love with the Carnegie Center's building, gifted by Andrew Carnegie. Below is a photo of the gorgeous old building. 

This photo of the Carnegie Center found on University of Kentucky SeeBlue Website. 

Carnegie Center "Fear and Loathing" Fundraising event

A woman dressed in 70's gear talks to a man

 Fear and Loathing 
This event is the Carnegie's biggest fundraiser and it was a lot of fun to work. The best part about this event was seeing everyone's costumes and there wasn't much required of Caitlyn and myself so we were just able to sit back and watch. While the event was interesting it wouldn't be something I would personally sign up to go to. You could tell that the attendants were passionate about their community and the cause but the event was more geared towards older people. 

This is the inside of the venue, as you can see the event had a great
turnout.

This is the lizard room where the band was located guests
spent their time floating throughout the rooms

This is the band performing in the green lizard room. The crowd
seemed to like their authentic 70's sound.

The night ended with a drag show, guests were very
excited for this event

Drag queens take the stage.

Celebrating culture at the Carnegie Center

One of the things that I love most about the Carnegie Center is their acceptance of diversity. Actually, not only do they accept diversity, but they celebrate it. At the most recent event I attended at the Carnegie Center, they made it a point to do just this. We had the tables set up with crafts for the children, some of which were loosely based on thanksgiving, which was coming up soon. When the children came, we gave each of them a piece of construction paper that had been labeled to look like a passport. For each craft that they did, they would get a stamp on their passport. The kids made bracelets, colored, did origami, made head dresses, and made  turkeys out of foam and feathers.

                                     A turkey made by one of the children.

 I think that it would have been more meaningful to match the stamp at each table with a craft that was similar to something done in the place on the stamp to be more consistent with the idea of teaching diversity, but it was neat to watch the children discover different places they didn't know about. It was also interesting how many of them did not know what a passport was. After we did crafts, we watched a performance by “Music Works”, which is a small orchestra consisting of local children. Some of the children said that they had been practicing with their instruments for years, which astonished me because they didn’t look any older than 8 years old. Although I’ve never been into music that much, it was really impressive what those kids could do with instruments I didn’t even know existed when I was their age. Altogether, I enjoyed myself quite a bit more than expected. 

                                                                   A brief description of the events that took place.