If
one was to ask the average college student today “What is freedom?”, the
majority of responses would include something along the lines of “doing
whatever I want” or “the ability to choose”. This is the primary question that
stuck in my mind this semester as I contemplated the effects of my community
service hours. What I discovered during this time is that many of the people
that I was serving, if not all, were seeking a sense of freedom in some way.
And while a few would probably agree with the sentiments of many youth today,
most would probably describe freedom from a different perspective: liberation from their burdens.
One
of my service projects dealt with liberation from human trafficking. I served
in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship as the Urban Ministries Coordinator. In
this position, I helped to organize and facilitate two events for our chapter, Loose
Change to Loosen Chains (a fundraiser for the International Justice Mission)
and Painting the NC STOP Human Trafficking Office. By collecting loose change
outside the Student Union, we were able to raise over two hundred to go towards
freeing and restoring human trafficking victims all across the globe through
the legal and social services of the International Justice Mission. On the
domestic side of the issue, The NC STOP Human Trafficking Office had just moved
their office from Raleigh to Charlotte and was in desperate need of a fresh
coat of paint. NC STOP is a non-profit organization that seeks to bring
awareness about foreign and domestic human trafficking and also make
connections between volunteers and organizations in their local area. With all
our talk of “freedom” in America, it’s hard to imagine that there are many men,
women, and children forced to work against their will in other countries.
What’s even harder to swallow is the number of people trafficked right here in
the United States! Although I couldn’t see the impact of my service right away,
I know that my time has helped at least one person somewhere escape the bonds
that enslave them.
The
second organization I worked with is a ministry called COTS. COTS stands for
Church On The Streets. I volunteered several Sunday mornings under the N.
Tryon/277 bridge serving breakfast to homeless people from all around
Charlotte. I’ve been working with COTS since I was first introduced to the
ministry three years ago as a freshman in InterVarsity. What amazes me most
about COTS is the sheer dedication the volunteers have to serving these people.
Every Sunday for the past fifteen years, rain or shine, hot or cold, COTS has been
there to feed these people and free them from their hunger, at least
temporarily. The warm atmosphere and smiling faces also helps to free them from
their burdens. COTS volunteers have such a huge sense of compassion for those
less fortunate than they are. Once, a man I was working with gave a homeless
man the sweatshirt off his back because he needed one. Another amazing thing
about COTS is how generous these people are. It costs about $250 for the food
every Sunday and there has never been a lack of funds for the food. COTS is a
ministry of Christlife Church in the Ballantyne area. Members gather together
at the church on Saturday night to cook the food and prepare it for transport
in the morning. Around 5am Sunday morning, the COTS team loads up the food and
the van full of equipment and drives uptown. The entire scene only lasts about
an hour and a half. Tables, chairs, and a serving line are assembled in about
10 minutes with the help of about ten to fifteen homeless men and volunteers.
Each week, the line serves about two hundred people, although the weather
determines exactly how many people show up. If you did not know where to look,
you would never know what great service goes on under this mundane bridge and
the kind of liberation COTS can provide those in need.
The
third organization I worked with was Habitat for Humanity. One Saturday, I
spent the day cleaning up a man’s backyard and demolishing the two sheds in the
back. The 63-year-old man was a Habitat employee who bought his home three
years ago. He felt he had been ripped off in the transaction and as the day
progressed and more junk was removed, I understood why. The house had fallen
into disrepair long before he bought it. For three years, he had to boil his
water in order to bathe since there was no running water in the house. The back
yard was overgrown and contained two dilapidated sheds. For most of the day, my
fellow volunteers and I alternated between knocking down shed walls and
transferring the debris into the dumpster. Although I was never able to return
to this worksite, I understood that Habitat had gutted his entire house and was
installing a new kitchen and new flooring. There were also plans to build this
gentleman a proper storage shed in his backyard and to do some landscaping. I
wish I could witness the liberation the man must have felt after Habitat was
able to lift this burden off his shoulders.
I
also worked with Habitat on another day, but this time I helped to sort bags of
recyclables at the Union County Habitat for Humanity Recycling Center. I spent
six hours that day sorting plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and bottle caps into
different trashcans based on their respective recycling type and doing other
chores around the site such as baling cardboard and plastic bottles. As
monotonous of a task as this was, I think this day really helped me to
understand the purpose of community service. This particular day was the only
time I worked with people who were not volunteering their time. The people I
worked with had court-ordered hours to fulfill. One girl’s name was Jillian.
Jillian never explained to me why she needed service hours except that she
messed up and this was her lawyer’s compromise. For most of the day, I worked
alongside Jillian and kept her company. I could tell Jillian had a short temper
and my job of sorting recycling became secondary to keeping Jillian calm. I
could tell Jillian was a very nice girl at heart who had just been in some
difficult circumstances in her life that made her bitter. The more I thought
about Jillian’s situation, the more I wished I could help alleviate some of her
burdens. Not wishing to pry into her personal life, I merely tried to be as
nice and comforting as I could in order to best express my sympathy for her
predicament and give her some hope.
Overall,
my service hours helped me to shed some light on the different kinds of
difficulties people face here in Charlotte and across the globe. One idea that
developed in my mind over the semester was that we all are burdened by
something in our lives. For the people I served, it varied from hunger to
forced labor to homelessness to a criminal record. But another thing that I
learned is that we can all play a part in helping to free one another from our
burdens. And that is the best kind of liberation I can comprehend.
