Haifa Community Week: Community Service Day

Haifa Community Week- Community Service Day July 29th by Emily Wood A couple days ago the theme of the day was community service. As one of the leaders of the day i had to lead the group through a very serious day where we were all pushed to experience something out of all of our comfort zones. As the leader this made things especially difficult. The first program involved all of us going to a hospital. Some of us were able to visit the sick children with cancer there while the others fellows were given bags of goodies and crafts to give to the other sick children. At the hospital Liana, Trevor and I sat down with an Islamic mother and daughter. As we drew pictures with the little girl who didn't speak english nor Hebrew, the mom explained to us what she does for Ramadan which happens to be this month. Later on in the day the group was faced with a much harder service project. We all volunteered at a home for people with disabilities. There were three different service projects to do there. One was taking care of their garden, the other was playing with disabled children in a padded room inside and the third was hanging out with the disabled adults and children in an outside area. I was part of the group that stayed outside. This was one of the most striking moments i had during service week. i played catch with a couple high functioning disabled people. However, many were confined to chairs for many different reasons. If i wasn't playing catch with some of the more high functioning ones i don't think i could of handled being around all the confined ones. It was still an fascinating experience that i would be willing to do again. All the fellows who volunteered that day were faced with many different obstacles that pushed their limits and their comfort zones. Even so, we all had new experiences and made a difference here in Haifa.