Blog #5

I have now completed my required amount of service at Cafe on the Vine. I still plan on continuing my volunteer work even though the requirements for the class have been filled. I have learned and gained so much during this time and I think there are still ways in which I can grow. Common themes that consistently appeared were perception, nonverbal communication, and listening.

It did not take me long to realize that the perceptions I had about poverty before beginning my service was effecting my judgement and prevented me from benefitting from the experience. At first it was difficult to shed these stereotypes, but it was not long before I got a better perspective of the guests of Cafe on the Vine. Mindful listening really helped that change of perspective. I began listening to the people and conversing with some of them and I think that is really when I started genuinely enjoying my volunteer work. Seeing the gratitude and happiness on the faces of some of the guests felt very rewarding. Though I could tell that many of the no-so-happy guests were going through very tough times, it did give me some peace of mind knowing that a simple bowl of soup could help ease that trouble just a little bit. I think I have also become more aware of and better developed my use of nonverbal communication. We have learned about these skills in class, but this is the first time I thought about these lessons and applied them to real life. You can tell a lot about somebody's emotions based on their nonverbal cues. This really came in handy because the people who came in did not tell me exactly what they were feeling. For the most part, we were complete strangers and it is not socially acceptable to spill your emotions to someone you hardly know. So to better understand them, I would try to get hints from the look on their face or the tone of their voice. Once I did that I could give them a response to either try to cheer them up, or laugh along with them. Themes like these that I have learned in my interpersonal communications class have really helped me get the most of my service-learning experience.

This experience will definitely stay with me and have a positive effect on my future interpersonal relationships. Working around people who are much less fortunate than I am has provided me with a new insight on a world completely different than the one I grew up in. It is one thing to learn something in a classroom, but something completely different to go out and apply those lessons in my life while interacting with others. I know that the things I have learned through this experience will cause me to become more skilled at communicating and understanding others through the themes I mentioned above. This has truly been a learning experience that I will always be grateful for.

Blog #4

I have volunteered at Cafe on the Vine for a few weeks now. I have adjusted to the rhythm of the hectic atmosphere and the swarm of guests that flood the kitchen during lunch hour. Amidst all the noise and voices, it is very important to listen. I can hear so much noise that it is sometimes hard to listen closely. Some of the guests are very friendly and they like to tell me a little story or a joke. This is an example of when I have to use my mindful listening to give them my attention and a thoughtful response. There is one guy that likes to joke and converse with everyone and all the workers know him by name. At first I just kind of brushed his stories off and pretended to listen to what he was saying, but my focus was on my job and serving the food. Now that I am more adjusted to the work and have warmed up to the other volunteer and guests, I think I am getting better at listening. I am finding that this is a huge benefit to my service learning experience.

The other day while I was in the kitchen, that friendly man who I frequently see in Cafe on the Vine showed up as usual. This time when he began telling me about his day, I listened carefully. He told me about how he saw his daughter earlier that day. It sort of shocked me how personal the story was and made me wonder if he had always been telling me things like that. As I listened I could tell how happy that made him and so I smiled back genuinely and told him that is great because I miss my family too being at college. I was a short exchange, but by listening to people I learn so much and build stronger relationships in the process. Experiences like these remind me how important it is to step back from my busy life style and pay attention to the little things.

In the future, I hope that learning to listen to the people at Cafe on the Vine will help remind me to stop and take a breath once in a while and listen. Between school, homework, my job, friends, etc., I feel so busy all the time and forget to listen now and then. Then relationships I have formed mindfully listening at Cafe on the Vine have become stronger and that is definitely a result of listening better. I want to use that and apply it to my other relationships and hopefully make those stronger too. For example, I will call home more often to ask how my family is doing. If I notice my friend looks a little down, I'll listen if they want to talk about it. These are ways I can apply my listening skills to strengthen the relationships in my life.

Blog #3

After coming back to Cafe on a Vine several times now, I have noticed many of the regular guests that come for their meal. One in particular I see consistently is a middle aged African American woman. Whenever I see her, she looks very depressed. It is pretty normal to see sad faces, but being in the soup kitchen seems to put them in a better mood at least. But this woman's sadness seems to run deeper than most. By the look on her face and her nonverbal reactions she gave it was apparent that she was depressed.

Since some of the other workers could tell she was very sad, they often would go out of their way to try and make her smile. I do not really know what to say to make her feel better, so I just give her my best smile and give her her meal. I hope that through this nonverbal form of communication, I can create a better relationship with her. Nonverbal communication is very important role during every relational stage and this is a good example. Simply by smiling at her, I can show her my happy mood and hopefully through emotional contagion, she can catch my feelings and brighten her own, if even just for a little bit. I will also try to converse with her in the future and coupled with nonverbal communication, I hope I can help just a little bit to make her feel less sad.

This experience has helped me to understand better the importance of nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication is something I do instinctively most of the time and I do not really think how it affects others. With this new understanding, in the future I can be more aware of those nonverbal cues  and use them to more communicate more effectively.

Blog #2

After coming back from my first day of service, I can say it was much different than I expected. The people who came through those doors do not resemble the homeless people off the streets of downtown Chicago like I had previously thought. Though they were not the most stylishly dressed people, they were not dirty, smelly, or dressed in rags. It did not take very long for me to realize these stereotypes had affected my judgement of the facility. These stereotypes I have formed since I was very young, growing up in a well off neighborhood in the suburbs of Chicago. These cultural influences have altered my perception when I look at certain situations. When I think of poverty, I picture the dirty, scary-looking homeless man begging me for any spare change. Though this is certainly an extreme example of poverty, there are others out there that are suffering in different ways. There are thousands of people living in the area who struggle to survive on their meager pay checks and many of those people are also trying to feed their children as well. Growing up I was never exposed to this kind of poverty. I can say that ever since I have come to St. Ambrose and started my service-learning at Cafe on the Vine, my perception of poverty has changed drastically.

It was much easier than I thought to forget about the "homeless person" stereotype I had developed. While applying this new perception at Cafe on the Vine, I found myself building empathy for those whom I came in contact with. This allowed me to set aside these stereotypes and put myself in their shoes.  Some of the people that walked in seemed to be happy, conversing with the volunteers and others seemed downright depressed. I could feel their gratitude as well as the devastating struggles that poverty has left them with. Of course there is no way for me to fully understand their position, but it did give me some insight and helped a great when I was working at Cafe on the Vine.

In the future I will try my best to use this understanding to reserve all judgements I have toward anyone walking through the doors of Cafe on the Vine. I will aim to help them as best I can and to see them as regular human beings, same as me. I will not get nervous around them because they are dependent on me and the other volunteers and workers at Cafe on the Vine. I am very fortunate and blessed in life and I am more determined than ever to give back how ever I can.

Blog #1

For my service learning project I have selected the Cafe on the Vine as my location. Coming from a Catholic high school, service hours are nothing new to me. The experiences of my previous service hours as well as being required to reflect on them certainly has an effect on my perception of working at Cafe on the Vine. I understand how it feels to help other people and that it shouldn't be just going through the motions to fulfill a requirement for school. For the full effect of a service project one must unselfishly give sacrifice their time to help others in need who are much less fortunate than ourselves. This was pounded into my brain at my last school, but that does not necessarily make it true of myself. Being somewhat forced to do service, I could not help perceiving it as a burden to myself. I know how selfish that is, given all the suffering others in the world go through every day. Up until now, I have never had the opportunity to do service that is so directly involved with people who are suffering everyday from poverty. My hope is that this service will force me to see just how blessed I am and that I need to give something back to the community by helping these people who need it. I do not want it to be just going through the motions, I want to really help others as well as help myself to really understand what it means to help them.


When I try to picture the location, I see a kitchen that smells like good food and a lot of nice and caring people that help out there. I assume it will be busy with cooks making the food and others serving it to the people waiting in line. I can picture it being very warm with all the stoves and ovens to mirror the attitudes of those helping out.

The knowledge I already have about this sort of service learning experience comes from a previous experience volunteering in a soup kitchen a very long time ago. I don't remember much, but I had to make a lot of food and bag a lot of sandwiches. It was repetitive and I did not really have much contact with the people I was helping. The volunteers were mostly old people and I was the only child there.

So I guess when I think about the people I assume they will all be kind of grubby looking; some homeless guys off the street that do not have a home or enough money for their own food. I picture the people I typically see when I go to Chicago holding up signs and begging for money. This is all I can picture when I try to think about the people I will be helping at Cafe on the Vine.

Living near Chicago often puts me in contact with a lot of homeless people. It frustrates me to feel so helplessly unable bring aid to all of them. A few years ago while I was sitting in a Starbucks downtown with my friends, a homeless man walked in and approached several tables begging for money. I gave him a couple dollars, despite the warning my dad had given me earlier that day. He told me that a lot of the homeless people want to buy drugs and not food and that I should leave it to the soup kitchens and homeless shelters to help them. Besides I wouldn't have been able to afford my train ticket home if I tried to help ever homeless person I saw. These types of encounters growing up are what connect me to the population I will be serving at Cafe on the Vine.