From Service Learning to the Outdoors

           After multiple weeks of patiently waiting to hear a response from Burrus Elementary to schedule official times for volunteering, I finally had to opt out of volunteering with CIS due to miscommunication between the CIS manager and Burrus Elementary School.  As a result, I had to quickly find other volunteering opportunities. On Saturday April 14, I volunteered at Japhet Creek, located in Buffalo Bayou, from 8am till noon. After volunteering here, I quickly realized that I had wanted to work in the outdoors for the remainder of my volunteering hours.  The Buffalo Bayou Partnership is a nonprofit organization, and the organization’s ultimate goal is to renovate Buffalo Bayou by protecting and maintaining its environment. People that volunteer continuously work in order to beautify the area in ways such as picking up trash and gardening.

        Even though it was an early Saturday morning for volunteering, the results at the end of a couple hours of hard work were truly satisfying. Before beginning work, we were shown pictures of poison ivy as a precaution to be able to identify and stay away from it if it’s spotted. Poison ivy is a harmful plant and can cause severe skin rashes if skin makes contact with it.

        Therefore the first task was to pick out Ragweeds. We were shown examples in order to spot it in the area we were told to work at. These plants are usually long (ranging from 1 to 3 feet), the stems are branched and coarse when touched, and the leaves are ragged shaped. It was a very enjoyable time being able to be volunteering with my other classmates. Teamwork was an essential element in being able to work together to identify the ragweeds and pick them out. Overtime, it became easier to spot amongst the other plants. Because ragweeds are shallow rooted, it was not difficult to pull them out of the ground.

        The second task was to cut tree branches into smaller pieces then take these pieces and place them on both sides of trail, providing a more direct and clear path for people walking on the trail to follow. This task proved to be far more difficult and challenging than the first and required much more team effort and hard work. The boys would use the saw to cut up the branches and then the girls would take the branches and place them along the trail.

       In the end, it was very satisfying to see the results of hard work paying off after only a couple of hours of work. It felt good to know that I was not only helping to maintain the environment but also making it a better place for people to enjoy.