Rivera: Service Learning

I have done community service for my community, and I took some courses where I also did community service for the Salinas community.  I took an upper division span 301s: Service Learning in the Spanish Community. This course was Spanish language learning, where I had the opportunity to interact in person with other people of the Hispanic community. Moreover, I improve my understanding of the culture and Spanish language. Indeed, I practice my Spanish since I was born and grew up half my life in México.  I am fluent in Spanish and that really help me engage in the community while doing my services. I did my community service in the Union de Campesinos, in the Salinas valley. In this work place I organized files on the computer, answered phone calls and basic questions, and scheduled appointments.  I met the outcome for service learning because I did the required hours requested for the class, and most importantly because I use my knowledge. This course also helped me enhance my personal and professional communication needs in Spanish. I did my service in an environment that was completely speaking Spanish, all the time and I was engaged with the Spanish language.  I also did oral presentations, in Spanish and wrote my reflective journal in Spanish, where I show my development and improvement in Spanish language communications skills.  I also did service in The Citizenship project in Salinas community. I helped people with their English pronunciation, and helped them learned the citizenship possible questions. This was a great experience because I was able to help this people, by translating some questions in English into Spanish for them to be able to understand them. In this project I was able to examine and analyze issues that affected the community because people wanted to become us citizen but did not know that benefits they would have with their citizenship. I showed meaningful involvement in this project because I really enjoy helping people in everything I can. I chose to do my service in this community because it’s mostly a Hispanic community, and the environment was complete speaking Spanish language. I am always speaking Spanish and I enjoy speaking my native language Spanish.  I also liked informing people of these services available so that they can benefit from them as well. I also met this outcome because I strengthen my understanding of the social responsibility of professionals in their field. I know the importance of helping people and the difference that one can make in serving their communities. I always tried to be involve in my community my volunteering and serving my community programs. Here is an example of my work for my completion of oral presentation for my serving learning class.