Today’s blog post comes from Charon Gaskins, an AmeriCorps member with HandsOn Network.

For  as long as I can remember, I’ve been doing community service.  In college, I joined a community service sorority, Gamma Sigma Sigma National Service Sorority.  As a member of this sorority I sought after a variety of service projects for my chapter to complete, I never thought about organizing our own projects.

It could have been because I was in college, taking a full load while still being active on campus, planning a project just didn’t seem like something that was easy to do.  Flash forward a few years later and here I am planning my own community service projects!  Through working with the GetHandsOn Campaign, I’ve been able to test out several of the project playbooks.

With the help of the resources I’ve found on the website, I’ve successfully organized several different projects in my community.  From a snack and learn with elementary students to tilling the land and potting seeds for a community garden, this has been an amazing experience.

I was invited to speak to a group of 3^rd and 4^th grade students about what community service is.  From that discussion, I had the students identify three areas where they were interested in doing community service.  The group of students stated they wanted to work with senior citizens, so from there I worked to find a local senior facility for them to service at.

The excitement these students had while working with these seniors was heartwarming, and the seniors were so excited to have a group of youth come to visit them.  I was told the students began bugging their teacher about their next service project on the way home from that project!

My most recent project was helping in a garden in the Atlanta area.  There was a lot of maintenance this garden needed, because over the years they lost a lot of their volunteers.  However, there is still a community of people that depend on this garden for fresh foods.

Using social media and making announcements in our different circles, we were able to get about 35 people out in the hot sun ready to work. We tilled about two acres of land and potted over 300 seeds   The volunteers for this project ranged from the ages of 13-60 years and everyone walked away from the project excited about coming back to actually plant the seeds in the garden in late April.

One of the volunteers at the garden was actually someone that receives food from the garden and though she is suffering from lupus, she wanted to help out in whatever way that she could.  It’s stories like this that keeps me motivated, doing everything in my power to leave a community changed by my presence.

I’ve had the opportunity to create several projects that focus on different areas and get my friends and family interesting in doing more service.  Several times a week I get a call about a group that is interesting in doing community service, or someone has an idea about a project that they want to do but need some help making it happen.

Working with the GetHandsOn campaign has been one of my greatest joys because it has given me the opportunity to really work with people in the community that want to make a change.  There are people that want to change things in their community but maybe sometimes it just seems so unattainable.

The truth is making a difference in your community doesn’t have to be some huge endeavor; it can be just one or two hrs.  If you are looking for ways to get involved in service check out Get HandsOn or HandsOn Network’s Action Centers for opportunities in your area!

Charon serves as an AmeriCorps National Direct member.  She is a member of Gamma Sigma Sigma National Service Sorority.  She is based in Atlanta, Ga. where she is active in the West End Community.