Bonjour à tous!!
Mekayla here, reporting from Paris where its...raining… yep still raining... but any who…
After going back and fourth and trying to figure out which volunteer opportunity to choose, I decided that I would go with Serve the City: Paris!! I have been working with them for just about 4 weeks and I volunteer about two times a week. It has been cold but a great experience. There are currently about 2000 people on the streets in Paris, so what Serve the City does is recruit volunteers to collect or distribute food for people in need. So far, I have decided to hand food out, which means I am usually freezing or wet, as Paris has not gotten out of winter yet unfortunately, but it allows me to get to know other volunteers and most importantly, practice my French.
For me, the biggest challenges I am facing have to do with the language barrier as I still have a hard time understanding French when it is spoken very rapidly. I think the best way for me to overcome this is just to continue to push myself outside of my comfort zone as much as possible because once I get used to the rapidness, I will be able to get it down. The benefits of volunteering with Serve the City is that I am able to see so much more of Paris than I probably would otherwise, which is exactly what I wanted. I also just love helping people and to see the instant happiness on peoples faces when they see food gives me hope that the little I am doing here may help them even if it is just for the day.
Overall I am incredibly excited to see where else volunteering with Serve the City will take me. This week I have decided to do more of the collecting of food to see the other side of operations. The environment at Serve the City is great and it is mostly young people, so it is great to hear what French young adults feel about the state of their country and specifically problems like homelessness in Paris. I am so excited to take you all on this journey with me! Stayed Tuned!
(Hopefully I survive this continued rain!)