Last Saturday, March 19th I volunteered through Hope Harbor to go "Puerta-A-Puerta" or "Door-to-Door" in a lower class Bowling Green neighborhood. We wanted to give these residents information about safety and health services that are offered in the area. Most of these people are unaware of what Bowling Green has to offer because the majority of them are Hispanic immigrants.
That morning we were assigned teams of one bilingual person and one non-bilingual person. Each team was assigned about 20-30 homes. I was grouped with a girl and I was considered as the bilingual one. I was kind of nervous at first because I know some Spanish, but I'm not fluent yet. Little did we know, but many of the residents didn't answer their door because it was so early in the morning or they were afraid to answer the door. I did get to speak to one Hispanic man. I asked him questions in Spanish and got my message across, I was proud of myself (although I always could have done better). Later I went out and talked to more English speaking residents and one more Spanish-speaking, but I didn't do much of the talking (in Spanish).
Overall it was great to use my Spanish and do community service. I felt like I was making a difference to those who are not sometimes seen as accepted in out society.
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