Community Services

Community service is an important part of life both in the United States and especially at Georgetown University. In order to introduce our students to this portion of our culture, we have planned several opportunities for them to experience service projects that help a variety of different at-risk groups in the greater D.C. area. The first portion of our program involved speaking to our students about the many issues that face the District, such as poverty, hunger, HIV/AIDS, education, immigration, and discrimination. This background allowed them to have a greater appreciation for their work in later weeks.

Our first week will see our students helping a group called SHARE, which runs a food bank operation in Hyattsville, MD, and assists families throughout the D.C metropolitan area. Each week they sell bags of food worth 30-40 dollars each for 16 dollars. This allows the almost 12,000 families they serve each month to access a greater amount of food that they previously would have. Our students will assist SHARE in sorting the food they receive in wholesale packaging into smaller bundles so that they can be distributed to families in need.

The second week will be a related but contrasting experience in service in the U.S. We once again will be working at a food pantry, but instead of a large, secular operation, we will assist Damien Ministries, a smaller religiously based organization that seeks to assist the HIV affected population of the district. We will help them in their food pantry operations, but it is our hope that the students will be able to see what differences they can find in the two distinct type of operations, while also learning about the grave problem of HIV/AIDS that faces the citizens of DC.

Our final week of service will change gears in terms of what we work on. Our partner will be the Anacostia Watershed Society. We will help one of their biologists remove non-native plant species along the riverbed. This will help to improve one of DC and Price William’s County’s most important natural resources. We will also learn about environmental protection in the US along with how such resources can help to improve the lives of the local residents, especially those of the eastern portion of the district.

With this variety of service opportunities, our students will learn about poverty, hunger, HIV, and environmental issues. They will have a better idea of how community service works in the United States, and hopefully how important it is for at-risk groups in the U.S., as well as its importance for more fortunate members of society.