Adventure Challenge, the volunteer site that I have worked at for the past semester and a half, is an organization that was founded in order to further assist children with special needs. Mentors (who are usually college students) are partnered with a child and their family, and both parties go through initial match meetings in order to see if the mentor is a good fit for the family, and vice versa. From there, the mentor and mentee establish a bond and work together to advance the child's social skills, as well as their physical activity. I started working at Adventure Challenge because I hoped to go on to become a pediatric occupational therapist, so I thought that this would be an experience that would help expose me to my target demographic.
I enjoy working with not only my mentee, but his family as well, week after week. We have developed a special bond, and not only was I able to understand more about a life that is drastically different from my own, but I was able to apply my Service-Learning experience to my classroom learning. This semester I am taking the Human Services Professions course with Professor Gardinier, and I have been able to apply numerous course concepts such as civic responsibility, and self-determination to my Service-Learning experience. It has been a joy to have a very different Service-Learning partner than my classmates, because I realized that although we are all working with organizations that have very different aims, we all connect our work and learn form one another's experiences.
-Akiera Gilbert
B.S. Human Services, Class of 2018
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