Gwen Holladay MGMT 5710 November 30, 2010 Service Learning Project: Christian Community Action The Organization For my service learning project, I chose to commit my time to Christian Community Action (CCA). CCA is an organization based in Lewisville, Texas that works to provide help to needy local families. A Bible study group at St. Philip s Catholic Church in Lewisville started CCA in 1973 when the group became determined to embody God s love on a daily basis. They found a great deal of need in this area, even though North Texas is a relatively affluent area. According to CCA, a typical needy family consists of a single mother and two or three children. Their greatest needs are usually not for the kinds of things many of us are anxious to get rid of our cast-off clothing and household goods. Their needs are more often for cash to prevent eviction or to pay for rent, utilities, medical bills, or food. To generate cash, CCA operates four resale shops: two in Lewisville, one in Carrollton, and one in The Colony. The shops sell the donated items CCA receives and some new merchandise it purchases, then uses the cash to help people in need. According to its website (CCA), CCA s stores generate more than $5 million (gross) annually. CCA helps people in a variety of ways, for example by providing cash for rent, utilities, and medical bills providing food at its food pantry
providing inexpensive goods through its resale shops outfitting kids for school with clothing and school supplies giving gifts to parents to give to their children for Christmas (parents shop for new toys, clothes, and gift cards at the CCA Christmas store much like they would shop elsewhere and give the gifts to their children themselves) giving baskets of food at Thanksgiving and Christmas so families can have a feast that includes a turkey, side dishes, and desserts What I admire most about CCA is its commitment to helping people get on their feet financially, rather than just helping them with their immediate needs. People who receive help from CCA must commit to education and training for themselves, working if they are able, and keeping their children in school. CCA works to plant the seeds of self-sufficiency. The Assignment To find a project, I called the volunteer coordinator at CCA, Charlotte Alexander (972-221- 4341). We agreed that I would work at the resale Shop in Lewisville on Rt. 121, the CCA location closest to where I live. The first time I went to the shop, the manager, Jaime Golden, asked if there was anything in particular I would like to do. I said no, I would do whatever she wanted me to do. She said she had a project in mind for me. I didn t know it at the time, but Charlotte had sent an email to the store to let them know I was coming. CCA uses a lot of volunteers, some students like me, others performing community service for offenses they have committed. The number of volunteers creates a need for a central volunteer coordinator.
Jaime took me to the office in the store. When we got there, she mentioned she wanted me to work with some jewelry. She asked if I had noticed the jewelry section on the way; I said I had not. She took me back out of the office and showed me the jewelry section : maybe half a dozen peg hooks with not many more clear plastic bags that contained odd assortments of costume jewelry. She said, That s why you didn t notice it it s nothing to look at. We went back into the office, where Jaime showed me a desk, off by itself, covered with both boxes and loose pieces of jewelry and some office supplies. There was more jewelry in boxes next to and under the desk. I am a very organized person; clutter makes me feel frazzled. I thought what we needed most was a large garbage can, maybe one of those big gray ones on wheels. Jaime said she would like me to organize the jewelry and make it ready to sell by putting it in bags and pricing it. She gave me some ideas about pricing and showed me where the price gun and hang-tag gun were. (More than once, one of the store employees chewed me out for taking the price gun even though no one was using it. She would always say, We need that! ) I started working. The first time I was there, on a Friday, in two hours I mostly priced and put hangtags on bags that were already made. I hung as many bags as I could on the peg hooks. Even though I did not start actually bagging jewelry, I was intrigued by the project; I think mostly I was intrigued by the challenge of bringing order to the chaos.
I went back the following Monday. I spent two more hours mainly pricing, tagging, and hanging jewelry, but I did start bagging some. Whoever had bagged it before had just grabbed handfuls of jewelry and stuffed it into bags, which bothered me because you could not really see what was in the bags. I pulled out things that looked like they could go together and bagged them. I figured customers would more likely buy bags if they could see what they were getting and if they were not getting a bunch of stuff they did not want. I should point out that the most expensive bag I ever produced I gave a price of $4.99. But I know as a customer I do not like to pay for something I will not use. By the end of my ten hours, I had cleared the desktop, gotten rid of all but one of the boxes on the floor, and left two full bins of jewelry bagged, priced, and ready to sell. The Experience In retrospect, this little jewelry project may not seem very important. But I do know that I brought order to a chaotic situation that probably no one wanted to touch was able to help the store earn money on donated goods with my donated labor (every time I went I had to restock the jewelry section, sometimes twice) made visible to customers some interesting pieces of inexpensive jewelry Once when I was hanging jewelry, I saw some people picking out clothes and accessories to wear to a wedding, and I thought about the fact that all of us like to look our best for an event like that but many people do not have money to buy things to wear just once or a few times. We know that there are people around us less fortunate, but it is difficult to imagine
all the ramifications of that fact: not only do some people struggle to pay rent and utility bills, buy food, and pay for medicine, but they care about how they look and may not be able to do much about it. Things like haircuts, makeup, and jewelry are beyond reach. I went to a wedding last summer and lamented that fact that I had to make a new dress to wear, but I did not think twice about paying $350 for airfare and not too many times about $250 to rent a car. I have only worn the dress twice. It is also good to know that spending a few hours on a project can have an effect; it can help people. I still admire CCA for the way they help people mainly by teaching them to help themselves and holding them accountable to do so. Reference CCA. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.ccahelps.org/index.php on November 29, 2010.