Mason Giem

Service Learning: Urban Social Issues in Hollywood

Colleen Kane
Final Paper
1/22/09

“Experience as trying involves change, but change is meaningless transition

unless it is consciously connected with the return wave of consequences which flow from

it”. – John Dewey, Democracy and Education, p.p. 140.

The experience of the last week of my life (January, 09) has been an enlightening,

life changing, and emotional time. With the many laughs and inside jokes, and experience

and reflections I know that it was the best vacation I have ever had. Part of what made the

trip more than another volunteer opportunity was the amazing perspective, experience

and reflection that came with the Service Learning Course. I will now show how the

Lecture by Cynthia Winkler opened my eyes to one of the causes of poverty, how Paul

Web allowed me to accept all types of service as meaningful, and how John Dewey gave

me the tools I needed to make this a life changing experience.

Cynthia Winkler is a well read and researched Sociologist in the fields of Poverty

and Women’s Rights. Through her course on “A Brief History of Poverty and Relief in

the United States”, I came to a conclusion that a majority of the reasons that people are

homeless is because they are unable to find a job that will give them a livable wage. She

talked about the history of poverty in America and how the same people continue to be

marginalized today. She talked about different U.S. Laws that have been established that

helped to reduce the amount of poverty in the United States and how the most recent
changes to the Welfare program have only served to increase the amount of Poverty in

the U.S. over the last ten years.

I went to Los Angeles this Winter Break with that assumption, but what I found

out was that there are many other causes of homelessness than the lack of social welfare.

We were introduced to a panel entitled “The many faces of homelessness”, featuring

three individuals that have all become homeless for different reasons. For the sake of

protecting the individuals involved, I will use fake names.

The first person on the panel was a man I’ll call David. David was raised in an

upper class family that became divorced when he was still in high school. Soon after he

ran away not wanting to deal with choosing between his mother and father. He has been

homeless off and on for much of his Life and only now because of his daughter has he

decided to accept the responsibility of life in America and get a steady job, a house and a

girlfriend. He loved the freedom that was offered to people without homes and he claims

that a person is never so free as when they have no responsibilities to anyone but

themselves. This perspective brought to my mind questions of what freedom really is,

and what does it mean to be a citizen.

The second individual on the panel was 63 year old Betty. Betty had spent her

entire life as a waitress working hard and paying her taxes. When she was 61 she slipped

in the freezer at work and broke her back. After she had collected her workman’s

compensation and tried to find another job, she found that nobody would hire her because

A, she was over sixty, B, had no other skills besides wait staff, and C, because she now

knew how to work the system. To me Betty clearly represented a person whose

homelessness was a result of a failure in the social welfare of society. She was “The

Eleventh” in my mind, and my heart and the hearts of the team poured out to her. The
most emotional experience for me during the entire trip came from watching the rest of

the team give all the cash they had, all the shampoo they had, all the love they could

muster, to this poor women who was living in her car and taking skin burning cold baths

in the back parking lots of a Chevron.

The last individual on the panel was a former television producer named John

who had made a million dollars, spent it on drugs, made another million dollars, spent it

on drugs, and was now working for the state to help reduce homelessness in LA county.

His example showed to me that homelessness is also the result of addictions that can be

out of our control. These addictions are thought of as mental illnesses by many in the

homeless service sector, and are given the same kind of treatments. These people

changed my viewpoints opinions on homelessness by helping me to realize that there is

no single perfect solution, but rather a combination of different solutions is needed to

effectively tackle the different causes of homelessness, and I will suggest some solutions

later in this paper.

In current ideas of service before I started my job at Americorps I held an opinion

that only the largest changes to the social injustices in this world were worthy of my time.

By understanding the reading “We Don’t Have to be Saints” by Paul Web in his book

“Soul of a Citizen”, I feel I was guided in understanding that it is sometimes the small

acts of good that allow for the larger acts to take effect. His story of how Rosa Parks rose

as a community organizer and was eventually the one to really press the issue of equality

for all, really gave me the idea that it didn’t matter how little someone was involved, as

long as they were involved. This idea was particularly relevant during some of the actual

service hours that we did while in LA.

 Many of the service projects had us cleaning bathrooms, or throwing things way,

or painting on an already painted sign, or mopping or some other seemingly meaningless

project. The thing that kept me exited about the work was knowing that I WAS

ACTUALLY HELPING, that the people running that particular organization needed us to

complete some simpler tasks so that they might tackle some more complex task. One

instance in particular that I remember feeling the connection between my small work and

the larger work was at the World Vision Institute. World Vision Institute is an

organization that gives supplies to other organizations in America and across the world so

that they may be better able to help others. While in the warehouse of World Vision I was

loading vans and cars full of supplies to be taken to other organizations. I was

experiencing first hand the way that the phrase “pay it forward” works and I loved it!

I felt that the most important part of the whole trip was during the reflection

periods that followed our days of service. It was these times of reflection that truly gave

meaning to the experiences. This is the second step in the service learning course of

education and a step that was conducted very well by DOOR over the course of the week.

During the week Matt, our DOOR Liaison, guided us to deeper understandings about

who we were, the meaning of our service, and about our future goals in life. I feel that

Matt did a very good job of bringing us through the steps of service to a point where

everybody on the team was thinking of the homelessness issue in a new light. Through

his reflection periods we were able to “See what binds together cause and effect, activity

and consequence” - John Dewey.

In my personal reflections I was able to find direction in the way I wanted to live

the rest of my life. I loved the service work and now my ideal vacation is one where I

volunteer to make that part of the world a little better. I realized that even through my
new found respect for LA, there is still the superficial side of LA and people in general,

that don’t care about others. I now know that I need to work harder to make up for their

lack of care. I now know that Missoula homeless programs could adopt the same mission

statement that they have in L.A. “A hand up not a hand out”. I learned that they are doing

a much better job of taking care of their homeless and some of the programs they offer,

like hair care facilities, could be offered here in Missoula with only a small bit of effort. I

now know that anybody can become homeless, that “It is easier to push a chain then it is

to pull a chain”, that if you’re homeless you need a beer. I learned a lot, I learned better

ways to be compassionate, better ways to be a leader, and most importantly a better way

to live. Thank you for the opportunity to experience this amazing journey, and I will

always recommend it to others.

Mason Giem