The first artifact I have chosen to include in my portfolio is this collection of photos from my first mission trip with my church youth group. In April 2012, I took a week-long trip to New Orleans, Luisiana with my church youth group to help refurbish and rebuild houses that were still damaged from Hurricane Catrina. While in NOLA, we worked with an organization called Youth Rebuilding New Orleans (YRNO), which buys houses still affected by the damage of Hurricane Catrina, refurbishes them, and sells them at low prices to teachers, in order to rebuild the education system in the city. Our group of about 30 high school students and 6 adult adult advisors were split up between two houses, where we did everything from painting to drywalling. Over the course of the week we accomplished more work than we could have imagined, all while immersed in the rich culture of New Orleans.
This was the first experience I had with volunteerism outside of my own small community in New Hampshire. It was also the first time I was able to directly see the effect my work was having on the community. Every day at our work site, people from the neighborhood would walk by and stop to talk to us, each one of them extremely grateful for the time and effort we were putting in to help piece their community back together. I realized on this trip how much of an impact volunteerism can have on both the community and the volunteers. My experiences with my youth group in NOLA and ever since have nurtured a love of helping others within me. These experiences have shaped my values, the most important of which being sense of community/family, acceptance of others, and volunteerism. The week I spent in New Orleans was one of the most significant of my life thus far, as it helped shape me as a person and as a loving, caring member of my community and the world around me.