The Aug. 23 earthquake did not put a damper on this year’s Freshmen Service Experience, with over 600 freshmen coming out to work at more than 50 sites across D.C. and Maryland.
To a theme of “There’s No Place Like D.C.,” the students volunteered with a wide range of nonprofit organizations such as the Columbia Heights/Shaw Family Support Collective, the Barry Farm Resident Council and Centronia.
FSE is a three-day program that gives freshmen the opportunity to do service at various community organizations, faith-based groups and schools in the D.C. area.
The freshmen logged over 10,000 hours of service this year, according to the AU website.
Opening Ceremony
The FSE opening ceremony on Aug. 23 came just a few hours after a 5.9-magntitude earthquake hit the District and caused significant damage in some parts of the D.C. area.
The keynote speaker, Paul Monteiro, the associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, was slightly delayed because of traffic resulting from traffic light outages immediately following the earthquake. But he eventually made it to the ceremony and thanked the freshmen for committing to service.
He stressed that even the smallest actions can have a large impact on the D.C. community.
“Don’t underestimate the importance of your own experience and what you’re bringing,” he said. “A lot of people who come to me want solutions from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but the changes comes from you, where you live.”
Jobs with Justice
At the Home Depot on Rhode Island Avenue in Brentwood, 10 FSE participants and three leaders conversed with Hispanic immigrant workers waiting at the store to be hired for short-term construction jobs.
The students, most of which were chosen for the site because they were bilingual, talked to the workers about their lives, jobs and wages in hopes of making them more comfortable speaking English and to encourage them to seek out formal English classes. Staffers from Jobs with Justice supervised the students.
The nonprofit is a coalition of labor, faith-based and other community organizations across the country that help people of all backgrounds get jobs.
Denise Paarlberg, a freshman in the School of International Service, said she was glad for the opportunity to interact with people from different backgrounds.
Most of the workers she spoke to were from Guatemala, but she met with other workers from Mexico, Honduras and Venezuela.
“We’ve met hard-working people and let them tell us their stories,” she said. “I hope they can take our advice and get more comfortable talking to people about their issues.”
Carmen Mason, an FSE leader and a sophomore in the School of Communication, talked to three workers about their lives and difficulties moving to the United States and finding jobs.
The workers are often hired for jobs from the Home Depot, but then are drastically underpaid or not paid at all, she said.
“They don’t speak English, and they don’t understand what’s going on, so they don’t have the means to fight back,” she said.
Alturo Griffiths, a D.C. Jobs with Justice, called this phenomenon “wage theft,” and said it is one of the many problems his organization is looking to tackle in the near future.
Mason hopes the discussions FSE participants had with the workers at Home Depot will empower the workers to seek change in their working conditions.
“I hope they see there are people out here fighting for them and who want to see things change and want to make a difference in their livelihood,” she said.
Griffiths called the discussions between students and workers an “open classroom.” The workers improved their English, and the students learned about the issues affecting the D.C. immigrant community.
“I hope [the students] get to see them and understand what’s going on with Latin America, how hard it is to come to this country and then get rejected by this society,” he said.
Closing Ceremony
At the FSE closing ceremony Aug. 25, Robin Adams, the assistant director of the Center for Community Engagement and Service, joked she expected a lot out of the FSE freshmen this year given the hurdles they had to overcome to get to their service sites.
“You are the first FSE group that brought an earthquake and a hurricane, so I’ll be interested to see how you ‘shake things up’ this year,” she said.
Keynote speaker Beatriz Otero, the D.C. deputy mayor of Health and Human Services, called on the students to form a “safety net” of people willing to go out and help others in D.C. through service.
She told the students every act of service is important, no matter how small it may seem.
“Each individual action counts, because every individual action becomes a collective action, and that collective action becomes a movement,” she said.
jryan@theeagleonline.com
