Service learning written report

The paper “ The Experience of Volunteering in Zombie Run” is an inspiring version of an essay on social science. Through our life experience, we learn how important it is to be moral, how to love people, help them, serve them, etc. These ethical principles we experience while communicating with others and sharing our love and respect with them. I want to tell about my recent experience of volunteering for an organization that creates awesome challenging events for people and donates money to help save people’s lives. This experience showed me that it is possible to help people for free; moreover, it brings big pleasure and faith that I actually can help others and I am responsible for those who are around me. I believe that such experience helps in the understanding who you are and what you are able to do in this world.

Section 1 (About the Project)
At the end of May, I volunteered in the project The Zombie Run by event management company Human Movement Management. The company makes projects which aim is to create interesting events (mostly in weekends) on different locations for people to have fun. But which is more important, the company makes money for donations to help kids battling brain injuries and disorders at Kennedy Krieger Institute. I chose the project because I think it is a great idea to do both make people happy, create something fun and get involved in charity.

Section 2 (My Responsibilities)
The Zombie Run is a creative role game-race, completed at Erie speedway, where I volunteered as a zombie for six hours. I had to keep special make-up on my face while it was raining. In addition, I and other volunteers, we had to create special conditions for the participants of the race: we scared them to make the zombie challenge harder. It was really fun and interesting to work on this project, but some weather circumstances made the work harder. Still, I learned that actually it doesn’t matter how hard circumstances maybe sometimes, the happiness you bring is worth some sufferings.

Section 3 (My Role in the Project)
As far as the project of The Zombie Run is totally creative, I often had to invent interesting ways to scare people and decide which locations to choose to make my work interesting and fun. And so as others volunteers did at the project. So obviously my role in the project was to create something interesting to make people happy and excited. In order not to make them lately feel that they spent their weekend for nothing. I was one of those who made people’s good memories, and I think this is important.

Section 4 (Applying the Acquired During the Leadership Course)
In the project, I worked with a group of four people, and I tried to use some leadership techniques to create a dynamic working atmosphere within the group. I inspired the colleagues to be more active and creative, to think about interesting locations for us to hide and different ways to scare the participants of the race. I understood that as leader I shouldn’t force others to do what I say; I tried to help them to find their own ways to express themselves during the volunteering. I realize that the catholic principles are true and others also have the right to be special and express themselves in an original way as much as I want the same. So I tried to organize the atmosphere of cooperation and democracy in our group. It was the leadership course that helped me to learn how to apply my social skills in communication, so I easily found out how to create a harmonious relationship between unknown people in my group. As far as I have taken the course Theology of Moral Responsibility, I learned how to act according to Catholic Social Teachings and this knowledge was really helpful in building bridges between different people. I realized how important it is to be able to treat others with loyalty and humanity. This knowledge of mine resulted in my success in making the participants of our project happy. I would say that the LIFECORE dimensions that fit my project are the following: the emotional one, because I felt confident experiencing leadership skills and making something creative by myself; the physical dimension, because I realized that there is so much fun in healthy lifestyle; and the social one, because the communicating experience I’ve got helped me to understand the influence of other people on our lives.

Section 5 (Personal Reflection on the Experience)
When I applied for the volunteering I didn’t think this experience would teach me something, because the project looked like something just fun. But when I started working I faced with certain communicational challenges and necessity of using my leadership skills to gather the people I worked with. I think this experience helped me to understand that I will meet a lot of different people throughout all my life and I have to learn how to treat them according to their uniqueness. I believe this truth I realized made me more conscious about my life and future.