Walter Alvarado

EXPL 292
April 25th, 2016
Patrick Green

Engaged Learning Reflection

Being from a dangerous and poor neighborhood in southern Minneapolis, compared to

the surrounding neighborhoods, I grew up with the mindset that God could only be found in
everything that people found great. No matter how much I attended Sunday Mass with my family
or how many Sunday classes I took, my mindset stayed grounded. I rejected the idea that God
could be found in poverty and hardship; so logically, I rejected the idea that I could find God in
my neighborhood. Even after attending Loyola for one semester, I still had a pretty similar
mindset as the one I left my hometown with. It wasn't really until second semester, after multiple
readings in EXPL 292 and a trip to South America, that I began to see with more clarity how
God could be found in difficult situations. Being able to read course readings such as Adam
Davis What We Dont Talk About When We Dont Talk About Service and attending a service
trip to the country of Peru, allowed me to be able to open my mind to different ideas on how God
could be found in all things as well as gaining a deeper understanding of what community
service is and its impact. Through this experience and newly gained knowledge, I believe that my
future impact and involvement in my community will grow as I now know the different
perspectives of what it means to be a global citizen.

I grew up in a dangerous and all-around bad neighborhood in South Minneapolis,

Minnesota. My family household was very Catholic so it was no surprise that at a young age my
parents made me experience different community service opportunities. It first began by
volunteering as an alter server for the mass at the church we attended in our neighborhood. This
role as an alter server served as a gateway for lots of other community service opportunities
ranging from picking up garbage on the streets to helping out at soup kitchens. Although I
experienced many different roles in community service, most of my time was spent at an after
school program called Banyan. Through this community program I built a foundation for the
kind of contribution I put into my neighborhood. That was the positive aspect of all my
volunteering. The negative aspect of my volunteering was that I was seeing all the negative
characteristics of my neighborhood and felt like I wasn't really enjoying the volunteering
experience. This influenced my thinking that God could not possibly be found in my
neighborhood, or anything bad in that case. I started to think that God was in all that seemed
good; nature, animal life, fancy neighborhoods, etc. He couldn't be found in the poverty or
danger that was my neighborhood. My reasoning for this was simple; God couldn't possibly
allow for all this bad to happen and even less just stand there taking no action. I felt this way and
believed this to be true till my second semester in college at Loyola University. During my
second semester at Loyola, I was able to read the different thoughts of people on community
service and see different perspectives of it through the ideas they shared. I also was able to
experience the presence of God in all things through my trip in Peru where I was able to see the
good in what I believed to be fully bad.

In Loyolas mission statement, Loyola describes that it is a Jesuit Catholic university that
looks to expand knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice and faith. I can
certainly say that I now have a deeper understanding of service through the learning I gained in
EXPL 292 and while in Peru. In Adam Davis, What We Talk About When We Don't Talk About
Service, Adam Davis talks about how there are many different reasons for doing community
service and how the service done, shouldn't be considered as an action for yourself but for those
it benefits. Doing community service here in the US could mean doing service for those who
need it only to help yourself clean away any sins/actions or just because you want to feel better
about yourself. I felt that my contribution to my community through the service I did was merely
an excuse to have God forgive me of any committed sins or to feel more adequate about my
stable living conditions compared to those who were barely surviving. After reading this course
reading by Adam Davis and experiencing his message while in Peru through the volunteering
that people from Peru itself did, I gained a better understanding of how one should look at
community service. People who did community service with us that were from Peru were
probably just in bad of living conditions but they did community service for the smile they saw
on kids faces when they helped. They didn't do it for the obligation of feeling better or as an act
of repentance. Seeing someone from the same conditions, helping and dedicating their already
limitless resources to helping for the sake of improving lives with no greater intention for
themselves, helped revive the real reason to community service. I felt like the character in Naomi
Shihab Nyes Gate A-4. I liked the new perspective that I had on community service and it
impacted the way I did service. I saw its development and impact which entailed for me a world

I wanted to see, one where people don't help for their own personal gain or forgiveness but for
the happiness and benefit of those they help.
The other part of Loyolas mission statement that was impacted through my expanded
knowledge and abroad experience was the part of seeking God in all things. I always had some
doubt about the true impact of my service and understanding how I was truly helping God in the
good actions I did for people. I knew that my actions were impacting individual lives but I wasn't
sure whether that was enough to actually do the work I was doing. After reading Starfish
Hurling and Community Service, I knew that everything I did had a major impact on the
individual life that my actions helped. I also saw this in the actions that I took in Peru while
helping kids in the Augustino neighborhood. The soccer team, coaches, and volunteers divided
up into groups and went to different locations calling out for kids to come join to have fun. At
first, no one came to participate but after a brief five minutes of yelling and blowing a whistle,
they all flooded the small court. These kids ranged from five year olds to maybe twelve year
olds. It was while doing activities with these kids that I realized that even small actions such as
brightening a kids mood for the day just by allowing him to engage in fun activities that
distracted from his harsh environment, could make a difference in the life of one person. After
reading Mary Olivers Singapore, I could connect the way Mary Oliver felt after seeing the
women cleaning in the bathroom. I took one look at these kids and the neighborhood in which
they lived, and could see the harshness of their environment; the struggles they must face. It was
after playing some fun activities with them, seeing them smile, and laugh that I realized that I
just helped them forget the struggles they are facing even if it was just for a day. It was through
this experience that my faith in God expanded and I believed that he could be found in the little

good that could be overclouded by all the bad that we see. Even when all looked bad in the
Augustino and the kids looked like they are going through hell, I was able to see the smiles and
happiness that they could still enjoy from what we would consider nothing. This enforced my
newly changed perspective that good/God could be found even in the darkest of places and that
could be sought through the work done as we did in Peru.
Sometimes it seems that my optimism is low like Shao Yanxiangs in My Optimism,
and it feels like my impact is too small. Shao Yanxiang mentions in his poem how his optimism
has been through the worst and seen the worst, which makes me think in a negative way when
approaching community service. However, this mindset changed once arrived home back from
Peru. After arriving back from Peru I realized that I was now serving more than just my
neighborhood but I had to make an effort to help a greater majority; not limit myself to just being
a citizen of Minnesota or the US but being a Global Citizen. By this I mean finding ways to
impact the multiple communities all over the world, freely and self-aware. I was able to hear
about volunteer opportunities when representatives from sports-based youth development
organization in Chicago came to see us and spoke to us about asset-based communities;
community assets that could be used for the development of the community. Unfortunately, I
wasn't able to volunteer for these organizations but through all this engaged learning, my
personal development towards aspiring to help others has grown significantly! I have been
looking for opportunities to do community service in Minnesota for programs such as Feed My
Starving Children, a program that could help communities in other parts of the world. Hopefully,
through all that I've learned and experienced, I can have a new approach and perspective on
doing community service to impact multiple communities and the people in them.

Helping others is difficult when it is already hard enough trying to get through life in the
conditions you are given and the harsh environment you are surrounded by. Growing up I
believed I could do small community service activities that could have a small impact, if any, on
a small amount of people. I never realized or even thought of the impact I was truly having on
someones life even if was only for a day. I had the wrong reasoning for doing community
service and this might have been the fact through which I didn't see what I was truly capable of
doing for others. After analyzing the many course readings and seeing the many different
perspectives on community service that they had, I was able to learn a few new perspectives on
what community service meant and how I should approach it. I was also able to search for God
in what I didn't think he could be found in such as poverty. It was through the engaged learning
of Peru that I learned this and feel that without, I wouldn't have grasped the true concept of the
Loyola Mission Statement. We could have chosen to go to a better economical and more stable
country but instead we did as Boris A. Novak says in Decisions, between two books, choose
the dustier one. We certainly chose the dustier one.