I’m so happy I finally had the opportunity to start my service learning project last Friday, September 24, 2010. I’m volunteering at El Centro de Corazon located on Navigation St., which is a community-based clinic focused on providing mental health counseling services to the East End Houston area. The first time I went to the clinic to fill out the volunteer application and all paper work required I was kind of nervous since I didn’t know what to expect, but I was quickly surprised by the friendly staff and their outgoing attitude. They were so helpful and excited that their clinic was considered for this type of school-based projects J. My first assignment was to help them in a new project they were working in association with the Houston Food Bank. The project consisted of taking volunteers from el Centro de Corazon to the Houston Food Bank and help in the sorting of food products and as a result El Centro could take food provisions to distribute among the East End Houston area residents. I was amaze by the enthusiasm expressed by all the volunteers present, thus I was even more excited to be part of such a wonderful organization!! After sorting lots of boxes of food, we were finally done and ready to take some food back to the Centro; I was glad we were done, but also super tired lol at the end it was worth it since we were able to take about 10,000 pounds of food yay!! This was also the first time I had to drive my truck full of food o_O . On our way back to the Centro I was able to get to know the group much better and I found out a lot about the clinic and its services. Once back to the Centro we unpacked all our vehicles, which were all full of food boxes and then I was able to take a look of the clinic :D.
As I mentioned before this clinic focuses on providing mental health counseling services, which includes: depression, bipolar, anxiety, trauma, ADD, domestic violence, sexual abuse, anger management, family issues, and child, family and couples counseling. As I took a look of the patient rooms I noticed that they are decorated as a common living room, thus I didn’t hesitate to ask why? And one of the workers answered that the purpose of this was to make the patient feel as comfortable and close home as possible, so that they can express all of their feelings/anxieties in a much easier way. I think that I could be of much help to this clinic since the majority of the patients are Spanish speaking, thus they are in need of Spanish speaking personnel; also I’m willing to learn as much as possible from this experience!!
I hope that in my next visit I can be able to meet the rest of the staff and I can actually start helping in a more clinic-base environment.
