Saint Mary's Dining Room

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Personal Final Individual Reflection
Raina Sacro
California State University, Stanislaus Abstract
This paper will talk about Saint Mary’s Dining Room, an organization located in Stockton, CA that helps the needy with programs and services such as the dining room. It will go in detail about my initial expectations for volunteering here versus what really happened while I volunteered here for this organization. I will compare Saint Mary’s Dining Room to Saint Vincent de Paul Alameda County, an organization located in Oakland, CA, that specializes on helping the needy. There I will talk about how my time volunteering at the organization based in Oakland influenced my thinking on how my volunteer experience would be at Saint Mary’s. Three …show more content…

I remembered before I started volunteering, I had to go into a small office to a singular Microsoft computer in the back to sign in and sign out. I brought this mentality to Saint Mary’s and assumed their volunteering logging in was like that. In reality, when I arrived to Saint Mary’s, logging volunteer hours was mostly all on paper. This was a complete 180 degree turn from how Saint Vincent’s did their logins. The second most noticeable initial expectation I had was that Saint Mary’s would have a culinary program geared to homeless which was the complete opposite from …show more content…

It was such a nice program because all of the students made a lot of good food and it was a treat for the needy clientele and volunteers to eat the students’ food. Some of the food students cooked were baked lasagna, spaghetti, salmon, etc. It tasted so good that it made me happy volunteering there. When I started volunteering at Saint Mary’s it was a complete opposite story, there was no culinary program there, but it still served good food such as tortilla soup. My last most noticeable initial expectation was that there was only one volunteer time period because Saint Vincent only had one. At Saint Vincent’s, volunteers could only volunteer between 9am-1pm at the soup kitchen. It was short and I thought that it was the normal for soup kitchens. This kind of changed when I arrived to Saint Mary’s. Saint Mary’s has multiple volunteer time periods volunteers can choose which is awesome. There is more selection with Saint Mary’s which is excellent because people have different schedules when they are free to volunteer. Having multiple volunteer time slots is great especially for students because they can gain experience working in the real

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