Day #2!

Wednesday was our second day volunteering and it was filled with lots of tedious work.  As soon as we reached the center Becca, Autumn, and I were split up to work on different tasks.  I was asked by some of the staff to work in their office and do some filing.  And by some filing, I mean LOTS of filing.

Since the Hispanic Center is run as a non-profit agency, they have a lot of paperwork that deals with governmental things that I am not very familiar with.  Each student has their own file containing everything from their social security number and a photo ID to certificates that they earned at school or at the Hispanic Center.

My job on that Wednesday was to make sure the order of the papers in each file was consistent with the order specified on the cover page.  I had to go through all of the WIA and B2B files (not really sure what those stand for..) I actually learned a lot about their system while doing this for 3 hours.

Then for the last hour I was asked to help a boy, who was my age, write a resume.  As we talked and reviewed his resume, he told me a lot about his life.  He is only 19 years old and has been married for almost a year and has a child on the way.  I couldn't even imagine having a child right now, let alone being married right now.  He told me how he hadn't graduated high school but instead had used the Hispanic Center to get his GED.  It was just a huge culture shock to me even though I have been around this Hispanic community in Mexico.  Seeing someone my age having the pressures of finding a job to provide for his family and create a better future was a big change from the normal 'go to college and have fun' type of society most 19 year olds have.