Throughout the time I have volunteered on service on saturdays at EPIC, I loved providing community dedication to see a person’s face fulfilled with joy and happiness. I got involved because of my passion to volunteer my time to others in need within our community. My heart is filled with positive encouragement and I enjoy giving it away to others so this volunteer opportunity I received was quite easy to accomplish. Little did I know after making an appearance at a service on saturdays, I’d see so many faces full of smile and enthusiasm every Saturday morning. From then on, my Saturday mornings consist of volunteering at the EPIC organization located in East Peoria.
I always feel fulfilled about volunteering when I observe adults having fun and smiling. Seeing the joy and happiness I have provided in the adult’s truly sets my heart on fire. The volunteer work that I perform involves bringing adults together to make the world a more connected place through residential, employment, garden, art, and technology programs for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities. It is without a doubt, amazing to see how much adults technology skills have increased since I have started to volunteer. Providing positive and encouraging support to adults to help them achieve their fullest potential has made a significant difference in their performance
. Leadership is a topic that is discussed about and viewed in many different ways. From being a team captain on an athletics team, to leading an entire country, leadership styles can be developed differently by the person who is in control of the leadership position. As I have entered the community and experienced a large glimpse of the real world I am able to picture a real leader and develop my own way of thinking about who a leader is and the characteristics that help distinguish the leader apart from the rest. I have learned everything I know about leadership through an inspirational leader named Carmen McCarthy. She has helped me develop into the the person that I picture a true leader.
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I have learned through observation at employee meetings and working on the job ways to go about leadership. After I experienced the chance to see how Carmen interacts with other fellow volunteers, I thought to myself all of the important factors of the group or organization I am leading that can impact them positively or negatively. With knowing the importance of each decision, I took the initiative to become involved with the decision process because Carmen taught me how to do so. I consider myself an influential leader to my fellow volunteers because I made my top priority every single day to delegate responsibilities and be involved in the decision making for tasks involved in the volunteer opportunity like what Carmen had taught me to do all year.
Carmen McCarthy did a wonderful job of doing those things so I learned effective characteristics of leadership. It’s hard to specify a specific person to have the greatest influence on me because there are truly so many people in this world that have had a positive influence on my life. I think it’s mostly the people that I have surrounded myself with that has influenced me the most. Surrounding myself with these people has helped me make positively impactful decisions. By surrounding myself with people who are fellow volunteers and that all share a common goal, I have found the highest amount of happiness. Some of the people I surround myself with do not have to be compatible with me, but all of these people bring out the best in me and I always do the same for them. My fellow volunteers and I commit to maintaining a high amount of positivity and happiness.
The volunteers that I surround myself with continue to provide me with happiness in life. All volunteers are talkative, enthusiastic, and most of all filled with laughter. It took me a long time to comprehend that surrounding myself with the right people can make a difference in my life. I was once volunteering with someone who was filled with negativity and anger. He constantly was insulting people to their faces and behind their backs. He did all of this to feel better about himself. This constant negativity and anger made me realize the qualities I wanted and not wanted in a fellow volunteer. It took the ability for myself to step out of the volunteer situation and insert myself into a new one with EPIC and associate myself with new volunteers to realize the people who I associate myself with can bring the best in me.
My life began to start changing. I began to become filled with laughter, happiness, and positivity. Life began to change in the best possible outcome. To this day, the people who I surround myself with always act in my best interest. By doing so, my life has changed for the better. Instead of trying to fit into a undesirable and unethical group of volunteers, my new volunteers allow me to be myself, take initiative, and bring out the best in me. Stephen A. Brennan once said, “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” This quote has led me to develop a tenacious work ethic and a strong ability to prioritize, take charge, and delegate responsibilities from observation of the community with the end goal of making a difference which is what I believe the definition of civic engagement is.
After my experience, I believe civic engagement is useful in the modern world. Since I believe that it is so useful, I have began to seek and design my own volunteer activity. I came up with the idea of participating in a cleanup of a river located right outside of downtown Peoria. I have contacted other dedicated volunteers around the Peoria community and all are interested to get this activity started. The date is to be determined because as of now the other volunteers and myself are communicating about what day everyone is available. This activity and civic engagement is useful because we all are working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that difference. It is promoting the quality of life in a community, through a non-political processes.
