Dylan Riddle
Self-Reflection 2
For the past three years I have volunteered for an organization called Backpack Buddies, which I participated in through my church. Backpack Buddies joins together groups of people from churches in the surrounding area of Fayetteville, NC. Each church would be assigned a school and the churches would take turns packing food into big Ziploc bags for kids that had no food accessible to them on the weekends or were homeless. We would pack as much food as possible into the bags and send them out to the less fortunate kids in the community. The ages of the students who received these packs of food ranged from kindergarten all the way to high school. The goal of Backpack Buddies was that no student would ever go hungry on the weekends, due to not having any access to food supply.
I believe Backpack Buddies an excellent example of relational leadership, because there was no designated leader over our group, we just all led by example and bonded with each other to complete the task at hand as a team. Me and mom always took charge of getting the food for packaging and delegating the whole packing process in order to ensure that everything ran smoothly. The group as a whole was also a great example to the surrounding churches, which helped more churches to get involved in Backpack Buddies because of the example that our church was able to set. It shows how standing for what you believe in and doing the right thing can really influence the people or groups around you in a positive way.
I honestly really enjoyed being a part of this group and having the opportunity to help out the people who live in my community that are less fortunate than myself. I could not imagine going home and not having any food to eat or not even having a home at all. MY heart really goes out to them and I am so happy I was given a chance to make a difference in their lives. I also really liked the people I worked with to pack the food, everyone was super nice and worked great together as a team. It helped us to bond and get closer as a community. If I was able to go back and do anything differently it would just be to take in more schools under our church, so that we could ensure that the kids who had no food or no home to go to, would still be able to have meals on the weekends when they are not in school.
Backpack Buddies ties perfectly in with my service action proposal, since it is pretty much the same exact process, but on a much larger scale. I chose Rise Against Hunger, which is an international organization whose goal is to end world hunger. Backpack Buddies was trying to do the same thing but on a smaller scale because it focuses just on students in the U.S. With Rise Against Hunger we could come together as a village and provide thousands of meals for people across the world. We could host our own meal packing event were just 40-50 people are able to pack a full pallet of food, which consists of 14,256 Meals in around two hours. I am not sure how hard it is to plan your own packing event with Rise Against Hunger since I have never done it, but it is definitely a doable event. This would be an awesome opportunity where we would be able to affect the lives of people all around the world in a great way.
Backpack Buddies was a wonderful organization making difference in communities across the country and I really enjoyed my time volunteering for them. It showed me great examples of relational leadership and the positive influence you can have on those around you, which I think we can carry over to the service proposal of Rise Against Hunger.