A Helping Hand

This picture represents the helping hand I lent to people during my service project. It goes well with my service project, since the people I dealt with were elderly and I am a young person lending my help to them. I helped the elderly at Lorien do activites, get them to places around the home, and I set up things for them to do during the day.

This picture connects well with my project, because we can see that the young hand in the picture is holding up the elderly hand to help support it. My service project was giving support to the elderly and disabled who need a helping hand which is what this picture is portraying. This picture is what all of our service projects were about and that is giving our helping hand to people who need it. I feel that I really helped the people at Lorien by reaching out to the people with my hands to give them support.

The Importance of Service Experience

Service experience is an important life experience for us. I think it may beone ofour biggest life experiences that we will ever have. It gives us a good look at the world around us and shows us good and bad things we did not know. It shows us that there are problems people are facing in the world that they cannot overcome on thier own. It also shows us that there are good programs to help people and that people we think are ones we should avoid are actually good people we should help.

It is good for our dignity to see what we have that others do not and to be thankful for what we have. It shows us that we should show respect for ourselves for what we are able to do thatothers may not be able to do. For others, it is good for us to serve them and show our respect towards them. It gives them self respect in that they deserve the help they are getting from volunteers and workers. It also brings out better behavior from both the volunteer and the ones being served.

The Common Good

This service experience is important for the Common Good, because it gives those in need the sense that someone is there for them. It shows the people that need help that there is a reason to have faith in God and in the people around them. For those serving the needy, it gives us an idea of how people are around us and need us to help them. This gives us the opprotunity to reach out to others and be who God wanted us to be.
To be able to give dignity to all people, we must sacrifice all of our negative thoughts about the people we are going to serve. We cannot have a stereotype in our minds and believe that all people are individuals. There are rules that make it that we cannot do certain things for people we serve so that they will still be independent even if we give them a helping hand. I can tell people around me at school or at home that through my service experience I realize now that there are people in bad condition that need help to do things, but I cannot judge them if they are not able to physically or mentally participate in certain areas of life. I also know now that we should not hold people's hands through everything and we must allow people to be somewhat independent.

Human Dignity

The human dignity shown at the Lorien Nursing Home and Assisted Living was very good in my eyes. They supported people who needed help, but they did not treat them like children. They know that people need help when they are in bad condition and that is what the home is all about. The human dignity I witnessed at Lorien was very strong and I was glad to see it.

The workers at Lorien helped the people that live there get a good sense of dignity as much as they could. They helped people do things, but they did what theycould to allow the residents to be independent and still do things on thier own. When I was working, I had to help a couple play a round of Jingo. They had a hard time figuring out what was being called and where to put the pieces, but I did not mark everything for them nor did I tell them exactly what was being called. The workers at Lorien told me that they wanted the people to think and be independent when playing games like Jingo so they could still win and manage on thier own mostly.