Describing a Personal Experience in Helping the Community

Two lunchtimes a week I take part in my school's Earth Dwellers Recycling Club. I take part in recycling as I feel that I am actually making a difference to the local environment's current litter pollution issues. By recycling, more pollution is cut down from our school, and hopefully, our school fraternity will look up to our example and perhaps be inspired to do the same in their future years. I also hoped to gain skills such as teamwork, social-skills, and any other to be achieved. The school does not have to pay extra fees to hire garbage collectors within school, so a lot of hard labour and money is saved. This activity only requires some time, effort and consideration from pupils belonging to the school.

The activities affected other members of staff as they did not have to partake in any tasks and simply had to dispose of their litter with more thought and not have to do our job, which was nevertheless achieved in our spare time. I believe I gained social-interaction skills as a lot was needed to perform procedures such as carrying the bins, asking each-other to collect resources e.g. hygiene gloves and simply communicating when assigning each team to different floors and I was also quite proud of helping new members to join the team, as they also valued being welcome in the team and my guided help showing them how to recycle and perform procedures correctly. I also feel that I have gained a higher self esteem, as Neil Armstrong once said, "one small step for man, means one giant leap for mankind" as if all schools contribute to recycling and follow our example, we may be able to make a large-scale difference to litter-pollution, and pupils attitudes in general. I also feel more apt in being encouraged to take part in group-tasks, and activities, which make a true difference e.g. recycling, thus the activity has also raised my confidence levels greatly.

A large impact of my activities was put on teachers and those in the school who pay for garbage collectors, as they need not worry about the recycling bins since we are continuously taking part and recycling all the schools recyclable waste materials. Impact from recycling is put on most pupils, members of staff and anyone who enters this school as the reduction of litter provides a warmer, tidier and more environmentally-friendly atmosphere to the school, which is crucial for those pupils who rely on surroundings to make them feel more comfortable to learn.

The skills that I have developed are a lot more social interaction, as throughout the experience I have been able to build up relationships with members of my team and the whole recycling team in general. My basic skills in operating simple functions have also developed, as I feel comfortable with simply emptying bins and carrying the waste to the recycle bins outside. Another great improvement due to this activity is my time management and organisational skills. At the beginning, I was constantly being penalized for attending school slightly late, yet nowadays I am hardly ever late both in morning registration and afternoon registration, due to the skills I have developed with leaving lunch early and using my time