One of the most impactful service events I’ve participated in through ACES was volunteering at the Dream Center. The Columbus Dream Center is a local non-profit that provides meals, laundry, and other services to the local community. Along with these services they provide the most important thing of all; Hope. The Dream Center is located and run just a short car ride away from OSU at Rock City Church.
While they offer a variety of services, the main one that we helped with was the free breakfast they provide to those in crisis. This involved cooking the food, putting together the to-go boxes holding the food, and serving food and drinks as people came by. While we were volunteering we also were chosen to help put together care-bags for some of the people coming through that contained things like toilet paper, toothbrush and toothpaste, soap, and more. It was really interesting seeing the behind the scenes of how all of their operation works and seeing a bit more of the technical work and labor behind providing this type of service. Perhaps more interesting was talking to some of the people that came through for a meal. The Dream Center primarily serves unhoused people, with about sixty people getting breakfast every day. Because of this we met a lot of different people while volunteering all with their own unique background and situation. As a city planning major their stories really interested me as it is a large part of what I study in my classes, as well as just being an issue important to me.
I feel like it would be easy to just put this experience under the “service” pillar of ACES, but I feel that it better falls under the “community” pillar. While what we did was indeed service, a large part of that service was to build community. The main goal of the organization is providing hope, and a large part of that is forming a sense of community with the people they serve. Most homeless people face a lot of aggression, and even the smallest friendly interaction can mean a lot to them. At the Dream Center they definitely stressed this, and in doing so we also formed a sense of community and support on both sides.
I have only volunteered at the Dream Center twice this year, but I am looking forward to helping out more often for the rest of the year and hopefully into next year. It has an amazing experience and I am very grateful to the ACE Scholar program for providing me with this opportunity.