Riley Dunham Blog

  I’m going to finish my hours sometime in November by going to the Oshkosh community pantry but haven’t worked hours there yet. Instead, I volunteered with a friend from class at the Oshkosh community pantries annual golf tournament for seven hours. From the golf tournament I learned the value of devoting time to a good cause. Since it was around seven hours of the day, I got to spend a lot of time with that friend from class and the people stopping in at our station. Although we weren’t directly at the center of the donations, I still learned a lot about how charity can be fun and not always so serious. There were multiple people from the Oshkosh community that I got to connect with and even my classmate. It helped to get to experience the aspect of time and community and how both of those are key components to charity. There wasn’t any one specific moment, but getting to talk to multiple people and have random conversations about the mini golf and getting to laugh and know them ...

      After doing some volunteer work and learning more about gift-giving and memory and commemoration in class, I've learned how they affect the motives of many people to contribute their time and money to a charitable cause. In class we talked a lot about how gift-giving also requires reciprocity, and I think that has a huge impact on the amount of contribution people have with their time and money to a charitable cause like the Oshkosh food pantry for example. During my volunteer hours for the mini golf annual Oshkosh event on main street, I spent seven hours volunteering with a friend from class and 50/50 raffle people popped into our station throughout the event. The raffle donated all the money to Oshkosh food pantry, but I think people would be a lot less likely to enter the raffle if there wasn't a basket to win for the raffle prize. The people donating money for a raffle ticket are the original gift givers, but without the reciprocity of the prize, people would d...

  As of right now, I haven't completed any service hours to reflect on because I signed up for a nine-hour golf tournament volunteering shift this Saturday. So, I was going to start my other volunteer hours after that. I received an email previewing what the day will be like, and it seems like I will be volunteering at a bar station and judging or reffing one of the mini golf stations. I haven't gone to the Main Street mini golf event previously, but after doing research, I learned that this is an annual charity event that raises money for the Oshkosh area community pantry and their goal of eliminating food insecurity. This seems like a great idea to raise money for a really good cause of preventing food insecurity, all while being a fun experience for the volunteers. It says on the flier, that if you donate 4 items, you can get one stroke off your team's score, and if you donate 16 items, you can get 4 strokes off of your score. Which I think is a great and funny way to ge...

    Previous to this history class, my favorite volunteer work I've experienced was church bingo. My childhood best friend and I had to get volunteer hours for national honor society, so we went to her church's bingo night. During church bingo, my friend and I handed out raffle tickets, handed out food, and played bingo with elderly at the end. I also ran into an old teacher and some of my dad's old friends throughout the night. My old teacher ended up winning one of the raffle baskets which was a fun memory to watch because I usually don't get to see that side of my teachers. That teacher always used to talk about her husband having cancer and it was heartwarming to see that they were together having fun, and he was doing well. It was also in general a heartwarming experience, as I knew and got to know some of the people around me and got to talk more with elderly's and connect with them, as it's harder to connect with older people because of the age barrier. I...