Christmas Caroling: A life-changing service project – By Rachel Quijano
Every year, students at Miami Springs Senior High School decide what club they would like to join; whether it is math club - where you compete in local, regional, and even national competitions - or Eco-hawks, a club surrounding environment wellness and gardening, there will always be a club for every student. I decided to join a club in my junior year known as Anchor Club. In the beginning, I expected the club to be a regular community service club where students clean around the school or do simple tasks to help the environment, but as time went on and I participated in more events, I learned that Anchor Club is not just a club to clean and organize, it is a family where we can all work together and better our community. There was a specific service project around Christmas time which changed my views on community service forever, I will be talking about such project here.
Christmas is a time for families to get together around the fireplace, sing songs, eat cookies, and of course, open gifts! The Christmas season is known as one of the jolliest times of the year. A time where one can spend their days with the people that they care about. Sadly, one of the most important age groups in our society is often left behind on Christmas season: our elderly. Many families cannot maintain their grandparents either because of financial issues or because they cannot attend to them due to busy schedules. As a result, many of these elders are put on nursing homes where they can receive daily care from professionals and ensure that they are comfortable every second of the day. This may sound amazing, but a lot of these citizens are left behind in these nursing homes, and their families soon forget about them.
This is when I learned the importance of giving back to our grandparents. I signed up to participate in the Fairhaven’s Caroling Event: A Christmas-themed event where we visit a nursing home near the Miami Springs Circle and we sing famous Christmas carols and give gifts to all the elderly. When we first arrived, we began setting up the area. We brought many stuffed toys, yummy drinks, and tasty snacks. After the men and women finished gathering up in their chairs and prepared to hear our show, we began the carols! We sang famous songs, many of them being of Hispanic origin such as “Feliz Navidad” and “Mi Burrito Sabanero.” I did know a lot of the songs, but thankfully we received the lyrics in paper form. Now, I’m not the best singer, but I realized that they were really touched by the act that we were doing, and it just inspired me even more to continue.
After we finished singing the carols, we began my favorite part of the event. We walked around the nursery home and distributed our gifts to the elders. This filled my heart with joy because they were all extremely happy that they could receive all the gifts from us. There was this one lady, specifically, who talked to us about the life at the nursery home. She talked about how it can be lonely; even though they are surrounded by each other, many wish that they could be visited more often by their families and people that have been important in their lives.
This story really touched me, and it made me realize how important grandparents are to our families, and that we should always place priority on them, even if we live busy lives. When the event finished, it helped me develop my knowledge of community service and opened a whole new world for me. Many of us experienced that a simple act of kindness can change someone’s life. Ever since, I have found that every event in the Anchor club fits the purpose of helping our community, and I would never change that for anything.
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