Notes on initial Service Learning Proposal

Service Learning Proposal

As initially stated in my first proposal I was going to be volunteering with YWLP, however due to some scheduling conflicts I chose to do my service learning hours with Animal Safehouse.  Animal Safehouse is an organization that finds foster homes for pets of women who are victims of domestic violence. It was started by UCF Women’s Studies professor Leandra Preston and has been a very inspirational organization to volunteer for.

In the course of my volunteering with Animal Safehouse I tabled an event at Veg Fest, which was a vegetarian/organic festival held at Loch Haven Park. We raised money and awareness for Animal Safehouse as well as passed out information on being a foster home for a pet. I also organized my own tabling event and supply drive which I held at the Starbucks I work at in downtown Orlando. I passed out information on Animal Safehouse and raised some money for them at my tabling event and for the supply drive I made a poster and left out a box for people to bring in used/new pet supplies.

Service Learning Activism Log

1.       This week I am going to finish collecting the items that customers have brought in for my supply drive and probably sometime next week I am planning to meet up with Abigail to bring all the monetary donations and supplies to her.

2.       Last week in class we were learning about Women and the Environment, I don’t really know how it would relate to domestic violence, which is what my service learning project is about. The only thing I can say is that I’m pretty sure Animal Safehouse is a very eco-friendly organization and supportive of anything that has to do with the environment.

3.       I was so amazed at how supportive all of the customers were at my Starbucks when I set up my tabling event, lots of people were very eager to donate and to bring in supplies.  It was nice to be able to raise awareness in my community about this subject because a lot of people weren’t even aware of some of the statistics I told them.

Service Learning Activism Log

1.       This week I organized a tabling event at the Starbucks I work at to raise money and get the word out about Animal Safehouse. I’m also going to be conducting a supply drive starting on Saturday and then I will leave a box out in my Starbucks for people to drop off their donations throughout the week. I work in a very neighborhood oriented Starbucks and a lot of our regular customers have pets so hopefully I will be able to get a lot of donations and raise awareness about Animal Safehouse.

2.       My service learning project relates to what we are learning in class this week because I am trying to raise awareness about domestic violence and Animal Safehouse and we were learning about Global and Transnational Feminism which is about uniting women together to raise awareness about women’s issues.

3.       I’m really looking forward to tabling tomorrow because its something that I organized myself and its at my work, so I’m excited to share everything I’ve learned about Animal Safehouse and everything they do for their community and to show people that they to can make a difference in other’s lives.

Women and the Workforce

                The movie Spanglish is about a woman and her daughter who emigrate to America from Mexico to try and have a better life. The mother, Flor, does not speak English and she works many dead-end, low paying jobs, that is until she realizes she has to be home for her daughter who is just starting to discover boys. So Flor gets a job as a maid for the Clasky household; the father is a celebrated chef and the mother has just lost her job and is a stay at home mom. This movie shows two different aspects of women in the workforce, there is Flor who is a Mexican immigrant and does not speak the language or have the education to get a high paying job and then there is Mrs. Clasky who is a well educated women who had a good job and lost it due to downsizing so she’s trying her hand at being a mom. It shows the obstacles both women have to face when it comes to work and family.               

                “More women than men make up the working poor, and women of color are more than twice as likely to be poor compared with white women, they may be involved in the informal economy as maids, babysitters or gardeners” (Kirk and Rey, p.311). Flor faces many obstacles when she arrives in America, she does not speak English and she doesn’t really want to work outside of the small Mexican community she lives in, in Los Angeles. She works many low-paying jobs until she has to step outside her comfort zone and gets a job as a maid for a wealthy family. In taking this job Flor is exposed to a way of living she is not used to and the definite class inequality between her and the Clasky’s.

                In the article The Mommy Tax, Ann Crittenden writes that, “For most companies, the ideal worker is unencumbered, that is free of all ties other than those to his job. Anyone who can’t devote all his or her energies to paid work is barred from the best jobs and has a permanently lower lifetime income” (Kirk and Rey, p.337). In one scene Mrs. Clasky shares that she lost her high paying job due to downsizing and decided to become a stay at home mom. When companies today have to downsize I think it’s easier for them to let go of someone who is a mother because they think she is less committed to her job.

                I guess you could say this film represented the gendered division of labor. The jobs it showed the main character Flor working are typically considered “women’s work”, she worked in a dry cleaners, she was a receptionist at a Spanish traffic school and finally a maid. Mrs. Clasky had a career in a commercial design firm until she was let go and she became a stay at home mom rather than going back to work and the husband was a top chef, which is typically a male dominated field. In conclusion this movie purely displays a typical Americanized view of gender job placement.

Works Cited

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women's Lives. Fifth. New York, New York: McGraw Hill, 2010