Addressing Challenges, Cultivating Leadership, and Overcoming Weaknesses

Addressing Challenges, Cultivating Leadership, and Overcoming Weaknesses

Challenges in the Shelter or Church and How I Help Address Them

The people who live in the shelter are victims of abuse, looking for a safe place to stay. There has been a rapid increase in domestic violence in the community, and women are embracing help to recover from the violence in a secure environment. One of the challenges I see in the shelter is inadequate resources. The shelter operates on a tight budget because most financial resources come from donors. Therefore, in some cases, there can be limited resources when there are too many residents. I help address the challenge by encouraging community members to donate resources such as food and clothing to help the shelter provide proper accommodation for the residents. Another challenge is residents’ dishonesty. Some of our residents are dishonest about their immigration status, thus exposing the shelter to legal issues that could emerge if the government learns that undocumented people are living in the shelter.

According to Elaine Kamarck, John Hudak, and Christine Stenglein (2022), illegal immigration is a major problem in the United States because of the challenges in hiring and retaining border patrol officers (Kamarck et al., 2022). Therefore, most immigrants take the risk of crossing the border illegally in search of greener pastures. I help address this challenge by helping the shelter conduct a background check on all residents and organize temporary accommodation that does not exceed two nights for undocumented immigrants before they get an alternative place to stay. I understand that I have a responsibility to report undocumented residents to the authorities, but I encourage other volunteers to help undocumented women and children to help them enjoy some happiness. Michael Sandel (2009) suggests that happiness is linked to morality. According to Sandel (2009), maximizing happiness is a moral principle. Therefore, the shelter can use ethics to justify the shelter’s decision to help undocumented victims of abuse.

New Leadership Skills I Learn by Volunteering

One of the new leadership skills I learned by volunteering is relationship building. Volunteering allows me to work with other people to achieve a common goal, thus facilitating engagement. The aim of volunteering at the shelter is to be part of civic engagement that yields positive results by reducing women and child abuse and helping victims recover. Volunteering also enables me to exercise my civic virtue. Sara Bosin (n.d.) defines civic virtue as a standard of righteous behavior or morality in relation to a person’s involvement in society. Therefore, I can positively impact my community by volunteering at the shelter. According to Robert D. Putnam (1995), civic engagement mechanisms focus on creating positive change in society, such as better schools, lower crime, and faster economic growth. Therefore, volunteering is a proper channel through which I can understand how I can participate in initiating change in the community. The second skill that I learned by volunteering is innovation and creative thinking. Participating in decision-making to resolve the challenges in the shelter requires critical thinking, which leads to the development of innovation and creative thinking skills.

A Weakness I Have Noticed in My Volunteering and How I Overcome It

The main weakness that I have noticed in my volunteering is bias. I focus on stereotypes about a specific group of people, thus limiting effective interaction with the residents at the shelter. For example, I realized that I judge women who have a drinking problem because of the assumption that their drinking habits may have provoked their abusers. However, I overcome this weakness by focusing on the shelter’s policies, procedures, and regulations, which include providing equal help to all residents despite their history.

References

Bosin, S. (n.d.). Civic virtue. Learning to Give. https://www.learningtogive.org/resources/civic-virtue

Kamarck, E., Hudak, J., & Stenglein, C. (2022). Immigration by the numbers. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/immigration-by-the-numbers/

Putnam, R. D. (1995). Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital. Journal of Democracy, 6(1), 65-78. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.1995.0002

Sandel, M. (2009). Michael Sandel: What’s the right thing to do? PsycEXTRA Dataset. https://doi.org/10.1037/e597132010-001

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Addressing Challenges, Cultivating Leadership, and Overcoming Weaknesses

Narrate your experiences on the project in a minimum of 500 words. Be sure to briefly relate your project experiences to specific ideas in each week’s readings. Ideally, you will synthesize ideas from these readings. You may also briefly reference ideas from earlier weeks of the course, as well as up to four additional sources you have found in your own research. Cite at least 2 articles and/or readings from the course in this entry. Demonstrate learning based on the assigned course materials.

1. What challenges do you see in the shelter or church, and how do you help address them?
2. What new leadership skills do you learn by volunteering?
3. What weakness have you noticed in your volunteering, and how do you overcome it?