By Fabian Link, CCI Greenheart High School Exchange Student
Fabian is a high school foreign exchange student from Germany. He is a member of the Greenheart Club and has, thus far, completed 15 hours of service. He is also a member of the Greenheart Club’s Service Leader Prep Program which educates, equips, and empowers its members. As a member, Fabian has gone through a special, educational, service learning orientation, and he will be required to do a service learning project during his time as an exchange student. His positive, caring attitude is an inspiration to all!
I’ve volunteered for three different organizations by now. One is an organization founded by parents to set up activities for young kids. The two others are the “PetAdoptionLeague” and a church youth group. With the youth group we had a clean up around the church; we mainly picked up leaves.
I spend most of my volunteer hours at the animal shelter with a good friend of mine. We walk dogs or socialize cats that are afraid of humans and can’t be adopted because of that. I really like the shelter since the people there appreciate your work so much and the cats remind me of my own cats back in Germany.
I haven’t done so much with the youth group yet because it has just started. But we are going to
do more clean ups and similar things throughout the year. The youth group also helps me get to know other people in my area.
Maybe that doesn’t sound very important but my most rewarding thing during my volunteering was getting a kitten out of its cage. It was afraid for a couple of weeks and step by step we managed it to make her feel more confident until Tessa left her cage. Walking dogs is a thing you can feel very happy about if you consider that they have to spend most of their time in cages without anybody else. You can really feel how happy they are to get out of the cages.
Right now I actually don’t have any problems volunteering. At the beginning it was kind of hard to find a place to do it. Because small organizations like the shelter don’t make any advertisements. But if you talk with the people you really get a lot of ideas and possibilities to volunteer.
So if you don’t know what to do with your free time in the afternoon; maybe it’s time to search for volunteer opportunities!
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