Sometimes I ask myself, “What can I do to give back?” I don’t have the time to travel into Houston for charitable events, and I don’t have the money to make large donations. What if an opportunity to give back was right under my nose? That’s when I discovered I could help out in one of the best ways possible, something that is fun and brings me back to my hometown on the coast: I could adopt a waterway. The Pasadena Adopt a Waterway program gives people the opportunity to help clean a waterway several times a year, thus improving aquatic life and making the waterways beautiful again.
Sometimes I ask myself, “What can I
do to give back?” I don’t have the time
to travel into Houston for charitable events, and I don’t have the money to
make large donations. What if an opportunity to give back was right under my
nose? That’s when I discovered I could help out in one of the best ways
possible, something that is fun and brings me back to my hometown on the coast:
I could adopt a waterway. The Pasadena Adopt a Waterway program gives people
the opportunity to help clean a waterway several times a year, thus improving
aquatic life and making the waterways beautiful again.
It would be beneficial to
incorporate collaborative service learning into San Jacinto College to
encourage students to get involved in volunteer events such as Adopt a Waterway.
According to Millicent J. Kelly’s article, “collaborative service learning
combines the more traditionally recognized concept of volunteering with
relevant higher learning objectives requiring application and synthesis of
knowledge gained from the learning experience” (Kelly) It is a
way to get students involved in community activities while they continue their
education.
This
program will greatly help young adults who return to college. These students
have many things going on in their lives already such as a fulltime job, a
family, and extracurricular commitments, and “see their time as a rare
commodity” (Kelly). Throwing in 3 to 6 semester hours on top of that can become
overwhelming. To entice adult students to participate in collaborative service learning,
the program is designed to “encourage adult students to involve their families in
the actual service experience” (Kelly). Also, incorporating collaborative service
learning into the curriculum will force the more mature students to step out of
their comfort zone and join in on the activities, since their degrees depend on
it. It is also an opportunity of the
young adults to become role models for the first and second year students,
showing that you can achieve success no matter how old or young you may be.
On
September 7, 2016 at 8:30 a.m. everyone in the community has the opportunity to
venture out and help clean up a local waterway. This includes adults, young
children, teenagers, students and non-students and whoever else would like to
make a difference in the cleanliness of our waterways. It will only take a few
hours out of your day to make a difference in the community.
I
encourage you all to join us in this Adopt a Waterway clean up. In doing so you
will also be educated on other waterways that are available for adoption and
what you need to do to become the adoptee of several waterways in the
community. We have a great need for adoption of the waterway that runs from Center
Street to Cunningham Drive.
What’s is the next step? If you are interested in helping improve local waterways on September 7, 2016 at 8:30 a.m, please contact the City of Pasadena at (713) 477-1511. Also, please fill out the volunteer application below.
You can help be a part of making Pasadena beautiful again!
Work
Cited
Kelly, M. J. "Beyond Classroom Borders:
Incorporating Collaborative Service Learning for the Adult Student." Adult Learning 24.2 (2013): 82-84. Web. 28 July 2016.
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