For my community service project, I wanted to help out the city of Amarillo by helping the Habitat for Humanity project. Turns out, there is a Habitat for Humanity Re-Store in Amarillo; where they take donations to sell back in the store and all profits go to building houses in the community. There are lots of opportunities to help out within that project and within the store. I was fortunate enough to work alongside a woman who runs the back (behind the scenes) of the storefront. She is in charge of looking at all the inventory that comes in through the donation gate and deciding whether the store can re-sell it. Carol is a retired teacher and told me that she loves seeing college kids getting involved in the community. The store manager told me that because of the re-store they were able to put up 21 houses in the Amarillo community last year! It’s a truly wonderful thing they are doing for the community and I wish more communities had something like it to provide to those in need. To volunteer to build houses there is a separate program that offers people to sign up for.
I helped Carol in the back cleaning up new inventory to put on the shelves. There is no air conditioning; and all the dishes, electronics, signs and such needed to be cleaned and tagged and ready to be placed in the store. It was a lot of elbow grease and tough scrubbing! I learned that all volunteers are appreciated, and I hope more people help out! For the rest of my hours, I plan on volunteering at the animal shelter because they are recently short-staffed and in need of volunteers. In the photos, I am working in the backroom and re-shelving books for sale. They are always in need of people’s help and I think everyone should at least take some time out of their busy schedules to volunteer anywhere.
