Hello, my name is Nigel and over the past year, being in Dr. Greer’s SOCI 100 class has given me the opportunity to volunteer at the Strathcona Community Centre through the UBC Trek programme. This program has truly broadened my horizons and helped me make the most out of my first year in university. Going into the programme, I expected to find just another volunteering position. However, I have found that Trek is quite different from other volunteer placement programmes as the Trek committee actually hosts many workshops, seminars, and events throughout the year that helped me to connect my experiences in my placement with what I am learning in school.
The cap stream I am part of is entitled “Global Citizens”. As such, I find it key to focus on the term, and what better way to discover the basics of citizenship than to volunteer locally?
Strathcona Community Centre is a small rec centre located in the poorer neighbourhood of Strathcona in Chinatown. There, I was initially placed in the gardening program, where we would take care of the small community vegetable and flower garden outside. The garden here is to be shared with the children at the adjoining Lord Strathcona Elementary, and programmes often run for children to help out around the garden. In addition, towards the end of the year, I also started to help out with the Afterschool Adventures programme, which provides day care service for kindergarteners from Lord Strathcona.
At Strathcona, I was able to take note of real world examples of many of the concepts we learned in Greer’s sociology class. One example that stood out was how I noticed instances of concerted cultivation in Afterschool Adventures. Several times I noticed how staff members or other volunteers attempted to reason with the children when the kids wanted something, rather than simply giving them direct orders as natural growth theory would call for. At Afterschool Adventures, I was able to tie in many parts of the novel Time Bind that we read during the family studies unit, along with much of what we learned in class regarding it. In addition, discussing with the staff regarding the community centre has shown me real world effects of government policies and decisions, such as how budgets are allocated for different aspects of the community centre and delegated to certain programmes over others.
I find that my experience at Strathcona has allowed me to connect not only with sociology, but with all of the other courses in my cap stream. In my placement, I have witnessed events that can be tied just as easily to both political science or geography as they can to sociology.
Overall, I believe that my experiences at Strathcona Community Centre and in the Trek programme have both been essential to helping me understand this year’s course materials in the Global Citizens cap stream. I would like to thank Dr. Greer for presenting me with such a wonderful and enriching opportunity to both learn more outside of the classroom and give back to the local community at the same time. For those considering joining but unsure of time commitments, I recommend finding a placement on the weekends or in a time slot on a day when you are less busy. Once you start doing it, you’ll find that the transit to and from is much more of a hassle than actually volunteering. I highly, highly recommend this program as real world experience is an indispensable aspect of learning, along with the fact that it also looks great on a resume. Best of luck to all those thinking of doing it!
~Nigel