Sharing Three Stories of Service
Boys & Girls Clubs: Springtime in Eugene, Oregon, is a beautiful time of year. It was my first year in Eugene as a college freshman at the University of Oregon. The flowers start blooming, the trees slowly begin adding vibrant green leaves to a seemingly endless dull and dreary winter. This spring, I would be working with youth at the Boys & Girls Club of Emerald Valley (BGCEV) for the first time since volunteering in 8th grade at my local after school program. I knew the power of human connection and positive adult role models because I felt I was a byproduct created by loving adults. My parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches, and family friends all played a significant role in my youth development. It was time for me to start giving that back.
Full transparency, I started volunteering with the mindset that I could have an epic impact on these kids’ lives while coming to BGCEV once a week. I don’t think we’ll ever know the actual impact we have on humans because it isn’t a measurable dataset. However, what I do know is that volunteering there changed my life. I thoroughly enjoyed going to the club and volunteering with the kids every week. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to apply to my hometown Boys & Girls Club in Eureka, California. This volunteering experience was the gateway to my desire to make an impact on the next generation.
I have now worked at three different Boys & Girls Club locations. I still work to this day at BGCEV as a fresh young adult who recently finished my bachelor’s degree in Planning Public Policy and Management. Working with you has led to other opportunities like going on a cultural learning trip to Uganda and working with an elementary school; also coaching middle school boys basketball.
Cultural Experience in Uganda: Fast forward a few months later, and I was riding on a bus from Entebbe Airport to our hostel in Kampala, Uganda. I was a naive young adult who had just finished my first year of college, ready to get out and travel the world. Maybe even solve all the world’s problems while I’m at it. At the time, I was unaware of the issue of the “white savior complex.” But here was a white college dude going to Uganda, dancing with kids, and making deep connections with people I wouldn’t see after the two weeks I was there.
But, I don’t want to criticize the trip’s entirety because of how much development occurred during that time. My eyes were exposed to some of the grimmest realities of poverty humans face. Looking out the window of the bus, it wasn’t quite what I expected. The news only showed the slums, wasn’t that why I was there? To somehow magically fix all their problems with a naive western point of view in two weeks? It stems from a deep place of love and compassion for people, though. I simply wanted to go there and make a difference, bring them joy. So I did. Some of my favorite memories are dancing with the kids in a small village in Buikwe, Uganda. The host family we stayed with were incredibly friendly and inviting as well. Actually, everyone we met in Uganda was beyond friendly. I’m not sure where they rank on the friendliest country scale, but they have to be up there.
It was a unique experience being the “minority” for the first in my life. But that word isn’t an accurate description because of a white person’s apparent power dynamics in a third world. So what’s the point of this Justin, why are you sharing this story? Because the people I met in Uganda were some of the kindest, compassionate, and generous human beings, I have ever met. In terms of economic and social development, they vastly lag behind many western countries; they care. If someone who gets their running water out of a well far from their house and who works all day tirelessly to survive can be grateful, I believe I can too.
As human beings, I believe that it’s our responsibility to serve others on earth. Furthermore, serve our planet as well. We live in a world where often it takes, takes, takes. Going to Uganda and voluntouring in Buikwe showed me that we can serve humanity no matter how developed we are.
Middle School Boys Basketball: Which leads me into my last story, coaching middle school boys basketball. As a competitive high school athlete, I was exuberant to start coaching. We will win a championship, I told myself; I’m going to coach them up! It’s going to be awesome! At the last minute, I was assigned to the C team, and there are only three teams, so you can do the math. We struggled a lot. Their lack of basketball knowledge frustrated me. I battled the desire to be a drill sergeant and force them to get better by being super serious every practice and never playing off.
But what 7th grade wants to do that? One of the most important lessons I learned from my first year of coaching is teaching them. Fascinating right? I realized that I couldn’t just tell them to do something; I have to demonstrate it and remind them repeatedly. By the season’s end, they improved so much we almost beat two of the teams in our division during the end of the year tournament. Unfortunately, with our starting point guard out with a concussion, we couldn’t close out games. We ended up losing both games, but I couldn’t be more proud of the team. That day I realized win or lose, it doesn’t matter the score in the end. All that matters is the team improved significantly, and we were having fun.
Last year I coached an 8th-grade team with some more talent. I had a few of the same players from the previous year, which was great to watch them grow. Our team had a year of ups and downs, and this year I had to still continuously remind myself that it’s for fun. It’s easy to get caught up in wins and losses, but why do I coach at the end of the day? To provide a fun experience for the kids while developing critical social, emotional learning skills through sport. We ended up finishing with a win in our last game of the year, taking third place in our league. But the most crucial part was half the team became close friends throughout the year. It’s all about human connection and serving others in whatever position you find yourself in life.
