My trips to St. Mary’s apply to civic duty today in America because civic duty is defined as the responsibilities involved in being a citizen of the United States. One of the most important parts of civic duty is volunteering and being involved with St. Mary’s to volunteer was a great aspect of civic duty. My experience has affected me greatly and also has many implications on society today. Today, volunteering has become a lot more popular and it allows people to become more and more thankful for the things that they have. My experiences down at St. Mary’s have showed me just how thankful I am to have food on my table and to have a home to live in. It was great to look around at all of the people who were volunteering down at St. Mary’s with me because those people were going above and beyond their civic duty by volunteering on their own time, they didn’t have 10 hours of community service that they needed to achieve, they were doing it for the pure joy of volunteering. My mom and I met a woman and her two kids and her story made me appreciate her a little more. She told me that she volunteered every single weekend with her church but when she stopped volunteering at her church, she began to take her two children to St. Mary’s every weekend to help box food for families that are not as fortunate as her. Her implications on society are obviously very great.
Society is extremely helped by civic duty in the United States. Thousands of people dedicate their time and money to helping out and volunteering for various charities and every ounce of help is appreciated. While volunteering at Harkins, Mitch and I witnessed couples coming up and donating $100, $200 and even $300 to St. Mary’s and we were then informed afterward that just one dollar was equivalent to seven meals! Also, when I went down to St. Mary’s, I had a difficult time getting into a spot to volunteer, they had so many people down their volunteering at that exact time that they didn’t have many open spots. When I went out onto the floor, there were so many groups volunteering that even the break room was crowded with people. It was also difficult finding jobs for people to do and we ended up having 6 or so people breaking down boxes all at once because there weren’t many other spots open.
One story that truly warmed my heart was a story that Barbara was telling me about Thanksgiving when the line for St. Mary’s wrapped around the entire factory. Thousands of families showed up for food on that Thanksgiving and if it wasn’t for the hundreds of volunteers that they had that day, things would have been a lot more disorganized.
