As a member of the Service Saturday team, I help to organize the sites for every month's event. This means that for every month's event I reach out to members of the community to see if they would be interested in having volunteers help out with various events. I am also the team leader at one site each every month. This semester I have volunteered at the Salvation Army, Brooktondale Community Center and Tompkins County Public Library.

September- Salvation Army

At the Salvation Army we helped prepare a lunch of egg salad, homemade chicken noodle soup and freshly baked cookies for members of the community. Everyone who was volunteering had to divide up the preparation of the food and work in close spaces in order to make all the food in time. Although this was a challenge, we made it work. We also helped clean up and organize the building after we were done cooking. This was a very rewarding experience for me because I was able to see the direct results of my efforts in the community. When people came to eat I got to sit and talk to some of them, which was the highlight because they had amazing stories to share and it was clear they appreciated the meal. It was a great way to start off the year and make a difference in someone else's life. 

October- Brooktondale Community Center

At the Brooktondale Community Center we helped make apple pies for their Apple Festival to raise money for the center. The money raised from these pies goes to help fund the community center so that members of the community are able to utilize it. At first I thought this would be an easy task, but when I got there it was a lot harder than I imagined. The volunteers and I had to peel and cut the apples so we could add that to the rest of the filling mixture while others made the dough and assembled everything. It took awhile to get a system down and required a lot of teamwork, but eventually we made an assembly line and were able to bake 34 pies total in just 4 hours. It was really great to be able to work with a lot of new people from Ithaca I had never met and know that even though I was only making pies my efforts were going to help the community. 

November- Tompkins County Public Library 

At the Tompkins County Public Library we helped with the Beautification Brigade in Ithaca to fix the flower beds along the outside of the library. First we had to get rid of all the old flowers and leaves so that we could plant new ones. After all the old flowers were taken out, we planted tulip bulbs that will bloom in the spring. I did not imagine this would be such a specific process, but it was interesting to get to learn more about the ways to plant bulbs. We worked with members of the Beautification Brigade as well as students from Cornell, which was a great way to get to meet other people in the community. We all worked together and completed the job in a shorter amount of time than expected, even running out of bulbs to plant. It was a rewarding experience to be able to do something in the community that many people who walk by will be able to appreciate and I can't wait to see the flowers bloom in the spring.