Blog 5

Working with Positive Impact over the fall semester has given me a lot of satisfaction. I feel like during our volunteer efforts I learned a lot and worked with some very interesting and inspring people. I am very proud to have been able to help in the community and feel privileged to learn from such people. I don’t know that I can necessarily pin down one thing that I am most proud of in our work with Positive Impact, save to say that I am incredibly proud to have done something to help the community, and done it in a way that I would never have thought of before this semester. Were it not for taking this English class I don’t think I would have ever considered volunteering to help with a group focusing on HIV/Aids. But now, having been forced to, I am proud to have worked within this organization. Perhaps the other thing I am most proud of is working with the people involved in Positive Impact. Marc Lambert, John Williams and Nicole Scott, our three main contacts at Positive Impact, are all truly incredible people. Rarely have I met people as happy, focused and inspiring as them. I am incredibly proud just to have been able to spend some of my time around people like that. I am even prouder to think that I may have been able to help them, even if it is some small way. From my point of view, it looks to me like many of the workers at Positive Impact dedicate the majority of their lives to their work. At times we were there in the evening and many of them were still at their desks, eating dinner while getting their work done. I don’t know that I can consider myself as good a person as these people, but I’m proud to have worked with them.
I don’t know if I will do any more work with Positive Impact. As we all know, being a college student and dealing with other responsibilities is pretty time consuming, so volunteering wasn’t something I had in mind when I first came to Georgia Tech. However, at this point, I have to say that I would definitely consider doing more work for Positive Impact in the future. As far as other volunteering opportunities, I don’t have any in mind, but I am open to doing more volunteer work in the future. In fact, after my extremely gratifying experience working with Positive Impact, I would say I am more open to doing volunteer work than I was before this experience.
Working with Positive Impact helped me to understand a side affect of HIV/Aids I hadn’t thought about before. In this way, it tied in greatly to our course. Our English class had a focus on sexuality, and HIV/Aids was an important subject during this course. By working with Positive Impact I have become more aware of problems that face HIV/Aids victims. These people have to deal with tough mental and emotional issues branching from their medical concerns. They often become depressed or have trouble with their family. Often, they can’t keep their jobs. Positive Impact helped me understand that there is more than a medical side to Aids. This project also allowed me to work on my communication skills, and working them into different forms. More specifically, our group spent our time working on pamphlets, brochures, handouts and other print material. This gave us a much better idea of how important the design, as well as the content, is in a project of this sort. I learned more about using images and presentation in communication, and how to use various programs to create these various documents. I feel like what I learned with Positive Impact will be very useful in the future. For one thing, working for such an organization is a strong resume booster. I also will be able to apply my new knowledge of Word, Publisher and Photoshop. Lastly, I know a lot more about what it takes to start up a program and to publicize it. This could become very valuable either when doing other volunteer work or in my career.