By Vivienne Matthys, Botswana
The most fulfilling experience of my SUSI 2024 Secondary Teacher experience was serving at Lorraine’s Kitchen, in Chicopee and Not Bread Alone, in Amherst, two soup kitchens in Western Massachusetts. During my two days at each site, no volunteer behaved as if they were doing anyone a favour; instead, they served people like it was a top notch restaurant, with impeccable customer service and respect for the clients. At both places, people left with their dignity intact. Seeing such service really humbled me, and I now really emphasize those values, of kindness, love and respect, in how I present myself to clothes.
The greatest service can only be to those that have no way of repaying you in life, which is the spirit of volunteerism that our group experienced. We must serve our fellow brothers and sisters not because we can, but because they can’t do it for themselves. My fondest memories in the SUSI 2024 group are best described by these images below.
Lorraine’s kitchen, listening attentively to the instructions so that I don’t make mistakes with preparing food for community members in Chicopee, Massachusetts.
I come to my conclusions on volunteering from personal experience.
The top image shows a group of delegates at a workshop I organized at Kgalagadi Womens Empowerment Centre, the NGO I volunteer at, to teach them about American values and the importance of Volunteerism.
In attendance were representatives of the Botswana Police Service, a child protection unit, the Social Welfare Department, financial lending institutions, the group Women in Business and church leadership. The highlight was the formation of a Community Outreach Committee, whose responsibility is to do referrals of women in crises to the centre.
In the picture below, I am with youth leadership of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa, Botswana Diocese. The aim was to spread the message of Volunteerism, using my SUSI experience as a case study. These leaders will educate their youth groups in the 14 villages they represented.
All opinions expressed by the program participants are their own and do not represent nor reflect official views from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State, or of the Institute for Training and Development, Inc.
