Caitlyn's Blog

Taking part in the Community Experience Project has been such a great experience. It has been fun to get involved in the local community around campus. I think that the best part about working at the Oshkosh Area Community Pantry is the amount of people that it helps because so many people use it. From all different ages and ethnicities, so many different people use it.  One event that had a significant impact on my time at the OACP is the shift that I worked at the Kid's Corner. One of the regular volunteers walked me through how it worked, and I worked at the desk until my shift was over. It was the only shift that I worked it, but it was so cool seeing how excited the kids were to pick their own foods. It was like they took pride in being able to pick food that they would be able to eat. One child, I specifically remember, she was quite young, but she kept explaining to me why she was picking the food she was picking. Her reasoning was because it was something that she thought h...

Over the course of this gift-giving and memoria lessons of this course, I have learned about both the history behind gift-giving and memoria.  Starting with gift-giving, people start with giving gifts, in the hopes of the return of gifts or something such as prayer in return. In class, we talked about how gifts now are given in hopes of reciprocity at a later time. This created the idea that historians call the gift exchange. These gift exchanges can happen in the present day at events such as baby showers, bridal showers, weddings, birthdays, graduations, holidays, and many more. However during the Middle Ages gifts were given to show honor and wealth. Almost to show the social status of someone or a family. Because of this development to show status, the Middle Ages, from 500-1000 became a gift based economy.  Memoria can be connected to the gifts, because the gifts were given by people to remember the dead during the Middle Ages. People during the Middle Ages were very worr...

I have worked one shift at the Oshkosh Area Community Pantry, and after completing the shift, I felt really good about myself and the ability I have to help others in need and the less fortunate. I worked a Friday shift in the morning, which is a day that the OACP isn't open. It is a day to reset and restock shelves for the following week. I worked with a few girls from UWO that were part of the Nursing program.  During my shift, I spent time stocking shelves, moving supplies around, and I had the opportunity to help pack an emergency box for someone that called in. This was a new and unique experience that I took part in. Myself and two other girls were given a box from Heath, and he explained what the emergency box was. If someone is in a bind or an emergency, even when the OACP is technically closed, they will put together a box of food for the person, to help them out. I think this is so incredible, that even when the OACP isn't open, they are still able to help the communi...

Before this class, I would consider myself to have had a decent amount of experience with volunteering. Much of my time volunteering came with the 4-H program that I was a part of growing up. While part of 4-H was taking care of my animals and taking part in different projects, another huge part of 4-H was community service and giving back to the community. A few service projects that I took part in through 4-H were creating decorations and spending time with people in assisted living, setting up and taking down chairs and tables for different events throughout the year, Salvation Army Bell Ringing, and cleaning the local churches. Aside from volunteering for 4-H, I also volunteered for the youth programs at my high school. This included volunteering for camps for basketball, soccer, and volleyball, helping run the concessions stands for different athletic events throughout the year, and volunteering for the tutoring program for students in the online school run through my high school....