Event #1: Student Organization

I’m a member of the Muslim Student’s Association (MSA). I attended a few of the meetings at the beginning of the school year, but I became so busy afterwards that I couldn’t take out the time to attend any of the other meetings. Since, this semester is not as bad, I finally decided to do some volunteer work for MSA. One of the things that MSA is involved in is Project Downtown. I was interested in knowing what this was. So, I decided to join the group of students that were heading to Durham to distribute some canned goods and pizza. On our way there, I learned that we were going to downtown Durham to distribute food to the homeless people there. The people that I was riding with were talking about how this was such a great experience. The president of MSA was talking about how the people there are so thankful for everything that we do for them.
It was really unbelievable to see all these people there waiting in a line for us. As soon as we parked our car, a few of the people came towards our car to help us take the food inside. They all were very nice, humble, and respectful. Along with serving them food, we also took a few of the peoples’ interviews. Most of them were willing to get their interviews taken. We wanted to get to know them so we could better connect with them. However, because of the lack of space, we postponed the introductions to the next week. We’re supposed to be meeting in a conference room in the library close by there so we could get to know the people that we serve better. This was one of the best experiences of my life till date. I would have never gotten the opportunity to have this personal interaction with the homeless people if I wasn’t part of MSA. In fact, I never really knew that they existed in such large populations. I definitely cannot wait to go back next Friday. I think this is one thing that I would really like to continue doing throughout the rest of the semester.