Local Student Gives Norcross a Week of Service

Editor's Note: Daphne Adebayo was a student at Duluth High School. Her family now lives in Norcross and she decided to give back to the community during her summer vacation from VCU, where she is now a junior. The following is her journal from a week of volunteering in the city. 

While I was at home this summer, I had the wonderful chance to do community service at a few different places. I would quickly like to say thank you to Connie Weathers though because without her none of it would have been possible.

It all started with an email to her that I never expected an immediate response to. Thankfully she did and she also presented me with lots of opportunities. The first job that I did was with Sustainable Norcross. I worked in the organic community garden and that was all I had expected to do for the week that I was at home.

As luck would have it, as I was pulling weeds the first day that I was working in the garden, Mrs. Weathers introduced me to Lori Sturgess of the Norcross Art Alliance. She is in the process of turning the old pastor house next to the Community Center into something like an all-purpose art studio.

It is a place that I would describe in my own words as an artist dream house, where they can do almost anything. So after I had finished working in the community garden, I went into the old house and scrapped wall paper off of walls. Sounds exciting, I know. Even though the scrapping part was extremely dull I did enjoy the conversation that I had.

The next day I was back in the community garden where Connie, her grandson Matt, and I planted a square-foot garden.  This was my favorite activity of the week, it may have been labor intensive caused by having to actually prep the soil to make sure that it was ready for the fresh seeds but it was different from all the other projects to me. It was my favorite because I felt like it was something I did personally, the seeds that were planted by me we my little project. I cannot wait to see how well the plants do. Some of the few things we planted were carrots, squash, broccoli, radish, and different kinds of lettuce.

The last service act that Mrs. Weathers found for me to was to working in the clothing closet for the Norcross Cooperative Ministry. What NCM does is give clothing and food, and even tries to help pay some bills of the needy. So what I did was sort through clothes that would be suitable to give to people. I went through some of the cutest baby clothes.

I had some very good conversations there as well. One that stood out the most to me was when I was talking with another volunteer and she was telling about her job search. Her potential employer asked her what are some of your weaknesses and she responded that she didn’t have any. The reason was actually the first modest reply to that question. She said she had no weaknesses because what is considered a weakness is one area can be strength in another and that even if they still considered a weakness she still has a foundation to build on. And as long as she had somewhere to start she could go nowhere but up. I have heard plenty of reasons behind why people have no weaknesses but that is one that will stick with me because it actually makes sense.

The last part of my community service was the photo opportunity with Better World Books. The number of books that get donated seemed pretty amazing to me. I wish that at the time I had a book of my own to donate but I will be telling my mom to drop off books there!

Over all my entire community service week taught me a lot of things from what are different kinds of weeds to just how much people do for their community. I am thankful for the chance to do so much for a community! I felt really appreciated and like I made an actual impact. Thanks Norcross and thanks Patch for letting me share this :)