Martin Luther King Jr. once said that “Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve…You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.”
Like most college students, my free time is very limited. As a full-time college student and a full-time employee, I normally want to spend any spare time that I get either having fun or catching up on lost sleep.
However, as I discovered recently, spending some of that free time volunteering can prove to be a beneficial experience not only to expand your resume but also to help your community.
Not long ago I had the chance to tag along with my sister Lisa, a human development and family studies major at the University of Houston main campus, as she completed required volunteer hours at The Beacon, a local homeless shelter in downtown Houston that provides meals, showers and laundry services for our city’s homeless.
Our volunteer shift was scheduled for a Sunday morning. This meant getting up early during the weekend, something I have not done since I was little. By Saturday evening I was regretting my decision.
As we drove up to the shelter there was already a group of people gathered outside the main entrance; their homeless status apparent by the bags of belongings they carried with them.
Once my sister clocked in, Ronald Marshall, the laundry and shower coordinator, immediately put us to work folding laundry.
“There is no wrong or right way to fold the laundry, just the fast way,” Marshall instructed us.
We quickly learned that he was right. Equipped with the provided latex gloves, we folded load after load of laundry as it was shoveled out of the dryers and placed on the foldout tables in front of us. We folded children’s clothing, socks, boxers, bras, sleeping bags, backpacks, Dockers, collared shirts, soccer jerseys, blankets, etc. You name it, we folded it.
And the laundry was hot. Windbreakers with their heat attracting material and jeans with their scorching metal buttons and zippers soon became the enemy. Most of the laundry bags held just a couple of outfits. Some even had just one outfit.
On our lone trek to the staff restrooms, which required a key card to access, we could see exactly how many people had come to use the center’s services and receive a hot meal. The hallways leading to the bathroom were lined with people sleeping on the floor, covered by a large sleeping bag or blanket. I saw one father and son sitting together as they waited for their turn to use the showers.
It made me wonder what life events causes people to get in this situation and what it must be like for them. How did the father feel having to raise his son in this setting? How did the son feel growing up in this environment? How will they be affected as a result of this experience?
In all, 150 bags of laundry were washed, dried and folded. We were so busy, in fact, that near the end of the shift I barely heard a man’s voice calling out to us from the hallway.
At first I ignored the voice, but after the voice persisted, eventually, I looked up from folding to see an older man standing in the hallway looking at us. He said, “Thank you to each of you for your service.”
The acknowledgement, while very nice to hear, was humbling. I hadn’t really wanted to get up early and spend my Sunday folding other people’s laundry. Yet here this man was thanking me for my service.
Volunteering gave me an exercise in humility. I would definitely do it again. It was time well spent and ultimately I am grateful for the experience. The fact of the matter is that we can all serve. We just have to take the time.
