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A Week as a Volunteer
by Chen Arad (year 31, Israel)
With a relatively empty schedule for the coming week, I walked off the Victoria Clipper ferry on the evening of February 13th to a chilly Seattle evening. My hostess, Gena Morgan, a year 11 student at Pearson College picked me up; a few hours later, and a calming e-mail to my mom later, I was fast asleep, enthusiastic about the first day of my project in the coming morning.
My Project, volunteering in the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center, came from my strong feeling towards the subject of the Holocaust. Learning about the subject and being active about it was very important to me back home, and I hoped to achieve a number of goals while working with this organization:
• To offer my help and to contribute to the center's effort.
• To learn and familiarize myself with the north-American and the Jewish North-American remembrance of the Holocaust traditions.
• To see from up-close how a non-profit organization works and functions.
• To be by myself in Seattle! Wahoo, freedom!!!
The resource center, as mentioned above, is a small non-profit organization, working to help teachers and educators to learn and educate about the very difficult subject of the Holocaust, that is not mentioned in the curriculum of a great deal of north-American schools, or at least not sufficiently. The center fulfills this goal by holding a very good archive of books, videos, posters, artifacts and testimonies, and also a bureau of Holocaust surviving speakers, and offering these to teachers free of charge.
Although my main “job” during the week was to catalogue the center's large video collection, I feel like I did a lot, and received a lot. Besides being able to work and help in this great environment, for a cause important to me, I got familiarized with the Seattle Jewish community, I had great time with my host family Gena and Larry, I got to meet an amazing amount of amazing and incredible people, and I had some quality time with myself in which I experienced amazing and surprising adventures.
Thank you Gena and Larry, for making me feeling at home and helping so much, Thank you Ilana, Miriam, Laurie, Katherine, Pete, and everyone else in the WSHERC for allowing me to help you and get so much in return, Thank you to every single person that I met during this amazing week, and last but not least, thank you the city of Seattle!
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