TJ Montgomery
English 100
Stephanie Gai
29 January 2009
Free Choice
Have you ever needed help? Have you ever wished that someone was willing to help you with your troubles? Have you ever cried because you thought you had to do it all alone? Have you ever done any of these things for anyone else?
So many people feel like the world should stop and cater to their every need, and yet they refuse to try and do just that for someone else. I love helping others and being here at Humboldt State University, allows me to do just that. Here through the HSU Campus, the National Day of Caring has been a tradition for the past 15 years. This year I became a part of it.
World Shelters is a non-profit California based manufacturer and volunteer organization. Their innovative structures apply proven technologies to create temporary and transitional shelters for humanitarian relief. Their work is supported by private donations, sponsors, grants and purchases of their shelters. I am enrolled in a Freshmen Interest Group also known as FIG. This FIG has participated in the HSU Day of Caring with World Shelters, this year was no different.
I arrived with my fellow students at World Shelters at 9am sharp. Well more like dull (we had some difficulty finding the place). We signed in and had a quick bite to eat and went straight to work. Ellen Searle LeBel, Secretary, welcomed us and gave a brief history on the organization’s community efforts (very impressive). We were given basic instructions from Production Manager, Rick Bend. He instructed us on the proper procedure for using the “clips”. It took me a while but I finally got the hang of it. We separated into groups and began putting the pieces together. Some people were cutting tarp, some were preparing blueprints (marking), and others, including me, were placing clips.
The whole process was quite simple. There were no difficult, hard-to-read directions. Only symbols. These shelters are you used all over the world, like in Mozambique, Guam, Serbia, San Salvador, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Jordan, Mexico City, Germany, and Hawaii. All of these places have different tribes or communities of people that speak all kinds of different languages or variations of the same language making scripted directions practically impossible. The team uses symbols to communicate the directions. I know it sounds crazy, but it works.
It took less than three hours to assemble three Q-Shelters to be used at the Humboldt All-Faith Partnership night shelter. At the end of the day, which was only 12pm, we had done something that a lot of people in need would benefit from. And really that’s what it’s all about, helping other people.
So many people feel like the world should stop and cater to their every need, and yet they refuse to try and do just that for someone else. I love helping others and being here at Humboldt State University, allows me to do just that. Here through the HSU Campus, the National Day of Caring has been a tradition for the past 15 years. This year I became a part of it.
World Shelters is a non-profit California based manufacturer and volunteer organization. Their innovative structures apply proven technologies to create temporary and transitional shelters for humanitarian relief. Their work is supported by private donations, sponsors, grants and purchases of their shelters. I am enrolled in a Freshmen Interest Group also known as FIG. This FIG has participated in the HSU Day of Caring with World Shelters, this year was no different.
I arrived with my fellow students at World Shelters at 9am sharp. Well more like dull (we had some difficulty finding the place). We signed in and had a quick bite to eat and went straight to work. Ellen Searle LeBel, Secretary, welcomed us and gave a brief history on the organization’s community efforts (very impressive). We were given basic instructions from Production Manager, Rick Bend. He instructed us on the proper procedure for using the “clips”. It took me a while but I finally got the hang of it. We separated into groups and began putting the pieces together. Some people were cutting tarp, some were preparing blueprints (marking), and others, including me, were placing clips.
The whole process was quite simple. There were no difficult, hard-to-read directions. Only symbols. These shelters are you used all over the world, like in Mozambique, Guam, Serbia, San Salvador, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Jordan, Mexico City, Germany, and Hawaii. All of these places have different tribes or communities of people that speak all kinds of different languages or variations of the same language making scripted directions practically impossible. The team uses symbols to communicate the directions. I know it sounds crazy, but it works.
It took less than three hours to assemble three Q-Shelters to be used at the Humboldt All-Faith Partnership night shelter. At the end of the day, which was only 12pm, we had done something that a lot of people in need would benefit from. And really that’s what it’s all about, helping other people.
Wow. I had no idea that this service existed in our community. Actually, I had no idea that these structures existed at all. They remind me of the buildings in Ernest Callenbach's novel _Ecotopia_.
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