Community Service Learning Essay

Service learning is an important concept because it builds one’s character by allowing an individual to step outside their comfort zone and become involved in the community. This year, the Dragon Battalion was tasked to create a fleece blanket to donate to the Salvation Army. Before we began our project, we had to learn what service learning was and what we needed to know about the overall project.

Lesson one discusses the difference between two types of service: community service and service learning. Unlike community service, where you are forced to help the community, service learning allows an individual to learn from an experience. You voluntarily help those in need, and since it is meaningful, it will impact you personally and others around you.

As mentioned previously, service learning it to provide a meaningful experience which can be done through an exploratory project, and careful planning such as who will be involved, how long will it take, or where will it take place. It also explains how an individual must be trained at the task so he/she knows what they’re doing. Planning is important, but so is what you decide to do. In lesson three, we analyze three types of service learning: direct, indirect, and advocacy. Direct service learning is where you are working directly with those who you are helping such as handing out backpacks to school children who need it. This contrasts with indirect service in which you help those in need, but do not have face-to-face contact. An example of this type of service would be by donating blood, donating old clothes to a shelter, or by sending letters to Veterans. Lastly, the third type is advocacy. With advocacy service learning, you do not have fact-to-face contact with those served, instead you are speaking out on behalf of an issue such as do not drink and drive campaign, or raising awareness to how many people are domestically abused each year. However, this year our project followed indirect