Serving in Tallahassee
By Kirsten Linnabary
My Experience
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From January 1st to January 7th, 2017, I traveled to Tallahassee, FL on a Serve Beyond Cincinnati (SBC) trip to work with the Fuller Center for Housing. Before I left Cincinnati, I had no idea what I was getting into. I was told that SBC was not the best when it came to planning, and before I left, all I knew was that I would be spending my first week of January in Florida, and that I had to be on campus at six in the morning New Year’s Day to start the fourteen-hour drive from Cincinnati to Tallahassee.
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The drive there was long, but we got there at around eight that evening, and then our team was split up into three groups to get to different host houses.
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The host house that I went to was terrific, and the two locals who housed us were quite nice and had interesting stories to tell. They had an orange tree in their front yard that we picked oranges from, and they made us breakfast and dinner for every evening that we were there. We were only at their home for a couple of nights, but it was great to talk to locals, and it was fun to spend time with them.
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On the first day of work, we were handed the task of re-roofing an elderly woman’s home. The Fuller Center for Housing in Tallahassee has a critical needs program, in which residents who have houses that have critical problems with their living condition can get aid and only have to pay the cost of the materials. This programs helps people with critical needs repair their homes without having to pay exorbitant costs for these fixes.
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One of the adult workers drying off the roof before any of us students started working on it. The roof was extremely slippery when it was wet, so we had to be careful in the mornings or right after it r rained.
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Stripping the roof of the
old, moldy shingles before
the new roofing was put
on.
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We had to put a tarp over the unfinished parts of the roof on days where it looked like it was going to rain, so that the unfinished roof did not leak through to the house below.
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On the first day of work, we were handed the task of re-roofing an elderly woman’s home. The Fuller Center for Housing in Tallahassee has a critical needs program, in which residents who have houses that have critical problems with their living condition can get aid and only have to pay the cost of the materials. This programs helps people with critical needs repair their homes without having to pay exorbitant costs for these fixes.
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After a couple of days, my group moved from the host family’s house to a cabin on Florida State University’s (FSU's) Reservation, which was on a lake and was where many students went for water sports. Since FSU was closed for winter break, everything was shut down, but it was still nice housing.
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These trees dotted the lake all around the FSU Reservation. The Reservation was normally used by the students for water sports (rowing, kayaking, etc.), but those aspects of the Reservation were closed because class was not in session.
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Whenever the roof was dry enough, we would be working on it, and by Friday it was completely redone. On Friday, there was a dedication service for the roof that had been built. It was great to see the finished product of something that I had helped build, and it was even better to know that we had helped a woman regain a good place to live.
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The dedication happened at noon on Friday, so we had the whole afternoon off. Because we were in Florida, we decided to go to the beach, and we ended up going to St. George Island. We walked along the beach, and then we got a nice seafood dinner.
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The waves crashing
onto the beach of
St. George Island.
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Then, on Saturday at 6am, we started the drive back to Cincinnati.
What was good
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I loved meeting all of the locals in Tallahassee. Everyone was nice and helpful, and I often got a home-cooked meal for breakfast, lunch, and sometimes dinner. Everything that was done was completed through a church group, and it was good to see a congregation that was willing to help us students, so much that most of our meals and houses were provided to us from this group of people.
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Also, it was great to get all the way through a service project. Normally, when I volunteer at Habitat for Humanity, I do not get to see the project from the beginning to the end. I liked how I was there to take apart the root as well as put together a better one, especially since I learned so much about the roofing process as a result of the fact that I was there all week.
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What was bad
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I knew that Serve Beyond Cincinnati was disorganized, but I was ill-equipped to handle exactly how disorganized the group was. They had provided us with a couple of visa debit cards that did not work a couple times for gas and food, and they even got the dates for the trip wrong. We came back a day earlier than they thought we would, and everyone at the Fuller Center for Housing thought that we came back that Saturday as well, not the Sunday that they had planned for us.
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Also, there were people on the trip that were not there to serve. They thought that this trip was for vacationing in Florida, and because of that, they were difficult to work with, especially when they quit work days early or made the evening plans extremely difficult to put together.
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What I learned
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I learned that, if I want to do volunteer work inside the USA, I should not go through Serve Beyond Cincinnati. The trip was great, except for when that organization was involved. I enjoyed doing the work, but I hated the stress that occurred because the money SBC provided us for food would not work.
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However, I appreciated everything that the church did for us, and I liked talking to the locals around Tallahassee. I would love to volunteer again in different places of the USA, but I do not think that I will do it again as a trip through Serve Beyond Cincinnati.
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The whole group posing on the finished roof.
