Hi, my name is Elena Ocasio, and I am a junior in the honor’s college at Georgia State. I am an Interdisciplinary Studies major with a concentration in law and society. I am also minoring in Psychology! I hope to attend law school once I get my undergraduate degree; although I am not sure what path in law I would like to take. My main goal is to start a non-profit once I complete law school to help the homeless community.

When going to select this course, I was really interested in the idea of “service-learning.” I had never really heard of it or taken a course that involves it; but volunteering is something I really enjoy and when I saw that was a part of it, I was immediately interested. Throughout the first half of this course, I have been able to learn so much more about the environment and the ecological conditions throughout Atlanta. We have discussed several articles that go into detail about what nature is, the relationship between humans and nature, and the effects that we have had on nature. We have also looked at multiple environmental organizations that are working to preserve nature and the environment we live in.

While looking into these environmental organizations, I felt most drawn to Concrete Jungle. Their mission is to provide access to nutritious food to people who are food insecure. Food insecurity is a huge issue within our country, and in 2020, “almost 14 million households did not have enough food to meet their needs, which greatly affect their health, well-being, and quality of life” (Pathak, Richards, and Jarsulic). Because of how greatly individuals are affected by food individuals, it is a great opportunity that I get to work with an organization that is working so hard to combat it. Specifically, because I want to start a non-profit in the future for homeless people, who are a part of this food-insecure population, it will be good to get firsthand insight into the things being done to help!

I am really looking forward to helping Concrete Jungles reach its goals by providing my skills in the process. I am most excited about the farm work we would be doing and getting to go to the farmers markets to pick up produce and bring it to soup kitchens. Most importantly, I hope to learn more about how to live more sustainably to better the environment and maybe how to run a non-profit as well!

Source: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-united-states-can-end-hunger-and-food-insecurity-for-millions-of-people/ 

Hello everyone! My name is Sabrina Thomas and I am a junior at Georgia State University. I have the opportunity of taking a service learning course, which focuses on environmentalism, and what it means to be sustainable. We have discussed philosophical points on “What is nature?” and “Is nature dead?”. After all of these enriching discussions, we have all been matched with our community partners.

I was lucky enough to be matched with Atlanta Creek League. This organization is helping the creeks in Atlanta become clean through friendly competition. This organization is quite new, so I am extremely excited to participate in the beginnings of this group!

Creeks have always been an important part of my life. As a kid, I could sneak through my neighbor’s backyard to get to this small creek that was fresh and crisp during the summer. The same Creek went by my future high school, and by the time I entered it, it was half dead. You could not see the little fish anymore, the creek bed was eroded, and it had trash all around and in it. During my senior year of high school, the school started a club to revitalize it. We petitioned and Gwinnett County’s water service was able to help us install oxygen bubblers, and plant grass to stop erosion and rid it of any trash. I could only see the progress for one semester, but even in that short amount of time, I could see the fish return. 

I want to do this for all of Atlanta. The nostalgia of being able to dip your feet into cool clean water meant everything to me as a kid. Atlanta has a myriad of rich biodiverse rivers, streams, and creeks. It is easier to keep something clean, instead of cleaning it up.

As I said before, Atlanta Creek League is a relatively new organization, and I am beyond excited to see Creeks that only need small adjustments to thrive again. As we have been discussing sustainability within this service learning class, I have realized around me that there can be so many small things everyone can do to create a beautiful and sustainable urban environment. 

My name is Noor Al-Baghdadi and I am a second-year (also sort of 3rd year) political science student at GSU’s Honors College. I am also involved with the 4+1 program which is a program that allows me to work on both my Bachelor’s and my Master’s degree at the same time. I chose to participate in this Urban Ecology service-learning course because it is a field I was not really informed about. Of course, I knew the politics and realities of things like climate change, the environment, nature, and all things of the sort, but I never had to look much beyond what my major required me to. The topic of preservation and conservation in relation to nature is something I was always interested in but only really talked about it in a broad, global, and political context. I’ve learned so much more than I initially thought I would since I started the course. In our seminar-style classtimes, we discussed how the idea of “nature” could perhaps be a concept that we have assumed is separate from human society. It can bicultural, too- different people understand nature, its importance, its role, and its relation to us in completely different ways. We discussed how human beings could be understood as ecosystem engineers, much like ants, and that if we perceive ourselves that way, we may better understand our role as natural. All of these concepts were things I didn’t even realize were debated and so vital in our everyday interactions with nature and the politics of the environment.

 

For our service-learning portion of the class, I chose to partner with the Amphibian Foundation which prioritizes engaging communities with the amphibian extinction crisis in order to implement and encourage solutions to the issue. I found their work to not only be interesting, but necessary. Many people don’t realize the urgency of the amphibian crisis and the Amphibian Foundation offers a space where people can learn about it and actively participate in the solutions to it. In my mind, allowing individuals and communities to directly participate in these matters is an ideal way of encouraging individuals to feel important in environmental conservation and promotes efforts that require communities to connect with each other. This is a beautiful way of combating environmental issues while also promoting community values. Every individual’s contribution to the environment matters and the Amphibian Foundation embodies that truth. For that reason, I chose to partner with them for my volunteer work. I hope to offer valuable perspectives to their mission and also gain experience and expand my knowledge during my time with them. While I’m particularly interested in researching with the organization, I’m not sure what position I will be given, but I plan on doing my best in any position I am assigned. I couldn’t be more excited!

Hi Everyone!, 

My name is Leslie Avellaneda. I’m currently a sophomore neuroscience major. Honors 3280 peaked my interest due to the service learning aspect. I’ve never heard of a discussion based class where time is partitioned into learning about environmental preservation and environmental issues and then getting the opportunity to volunteer with an affiliated community service partner. Due to this unique structure of the class, I decided to sign up for it. Ever since high school, I’ve placed a high importance on giving back to the community and completed over 400 hours of service. Due to also being pre-med. I became interested in the work Wild Nest Bird Rehab conducts due to it being the closest to healthcare considering there is a responsibility of taking care of live birds and tending to them. 

The Wild Nest Bird is a non-profit organization that specifically focuses on rehabilitating birds, This entails tending to their wounds and health until they can be released into the wild. After meeting with the organization today, I’ve learned more about how the organization seems to work. Everyone has their own role and everything seems to work in a very structured way. The organization was founded in 2021by Nancy who first started rehabilitating birds out of her own basement. Once there was no more space for all the birds she was helping rehabilitate, she decided to set up her location in Decatur where now now over 1,500 birds are getting rehabilitated per year. Wild Nest presents an opportunity for learning about environmental issues, wildlife, nature and how to care for wildlife birds. When a bird is first received, the first step is to conduct a wellness check, in which they determine what the next course of action should be. There are specific rooms for the birds: juvenile, infant, adult and quarantine. Currently, the organization is overgoing remodels and making more space for the new baby bird season upcoming at the end of March. Through my work at the Wild Nest Bird Rehab, I hope to learn more about tending to birds and hopefully getting trusted with higher level responsibilities such as feeding a bird and getting to learn ways to reduce the effect humans have on wildlife. 

Hello, everyone!

My name is Sandra Flaucher, and I am a senior at Georgia State University. I am also a part of the Honors College and took many interesting honors classes, including this amazing course, Honors Service Learning. I chose this course because 1. I knew I wanted to take a class that involved volunteering, 2. I wanted to learn more about our environment, and 3. I knew our professor would make the class fun!

One thing I loved about this class thus far is the number of different opinions I heard from my classmates; furthermore, I got to be involved in amazing debates that changed my perspective of how I looked at nature itself and our evolvement in it.
As for my community service organization, I chose this organization because it works to create a better environment in general and offers environmental literacy for children and adults to protect the progress we make every day. I hope by the end of this class, I will be more knowledgeable when it comes to the nature surrounding us. 

Hello!

My name is Mahnoor Khan. I am a graduating senior, finishing up my bachelor’s degree in chemistry. My experience at GSU was exciting and I am grateful for all the wonderful friends and teachers I met during my journey. During my last semester here, with all my credit requirements filled, I wanted to choose a class that would allow me to give back to the community. Since this was a service-learning class, I imagined it would not be as interactive and engaging. However, it was the complete opposite, I loved our class meetings where we talked about the different perspectives on climate change, its effects on our daily lives and actions we could take to resolve it. 

For the second half of this class, we will be volunteering for a non-profit community partner who is working to preserve nature and create a positive impact. I will be volunteering for Atlanta Creek League. It is an organization that raises awareness for the local creeks in Atlanta. They sell T-shirts to raise funds and have projects for cleaning local creeks in Atlanta area. I love being around water and I knew volunteering for this organization would be very rewarding for me. Therefore, I am very excited to go help and become a part of this organization. I look forward to learning more about the hidden creeks in Atlanta Area and possibly find my favorite spot where I would go spend time with my family.