Summary Of Experience
My twelve hours of fieldwork were well spent at the 14th & Chestnut Community Center. The experience not only provided me with an opportunity to learn about the people at the place but also made me self-reflect on different aspects of learning and life in general. The people I interacted with for most of my time at the centre were those who fall under the age bracket of adolescents. During that period, I was able to learn about some of the challenges faced by most teenagers in their day-to-day lives and how they deal with them. I was also able to share some of my ways of handling different issues and also learn how other people handle them.
Brief Description Of The Center
14th & Chestnut Community Center is a non-profit Christian organization that organizes and conducts various activities that involve children in the local community. As stated in its mission, the community centre promotes the spiritual, physical, and educational needs of children through its various programs. This consequently ensures that children are provided with a good environment for growth and development. The centre seeks to guide the community in the right way by influencing the most vulnerable populations, which are adolescents and emerging adults.
Adolescence And Emerging Adulthood
This means that if society is not careful about how adolescents and emerging adults fare, the results could be apocalyptic. An example of a situation which needs the attention of adults is the ability of adolescents to share their problems with other people (Arnett, 2017). Female members of this fraction could be reluctant to share due to the fear of being embarrassed. On the other hand, in most societies, male members of this fraction practice a habit of keeping their problems to themselves under the belief that it makes them strong.
Such a habit could be helpful at some point; for example, it could prevent a person from being traumatized or losing self-esteem due to embarrassing moments. However, the culture is more detrimental. This is because one of the challenges faced by this population is decision-making. If a person makes one wrong decision and, due to the culture of keeping things to them, fails to correct it, it could ruin their lives. The community centre in which I did my fieldwork creates a friendly environment where people can freely share their problems. In addition, the centre runs programs that promote teamwork, sharing, and trust. This enables those taking part in the programs to bond, creating a good environment for the sharing of personal problems and offering solutions. In the case where two children cannot handle a certain challenge, they can reach out to the officials for counselling. The officials were very friendly, which made it easy for the students to freely approach them anytime.
Effects Of Culture On Development
Culture determines how a person views self, other people and everything around them. The process of understanding oneself starts with self-examination (Arnett, 2017). This allows people to know their strengths and weaknesses. This is then followed by an evaluation of other people to know how they are and what makes them different from themselves. The final stage of this process is assessing how other people view the person. Most adolescents and emerging adults, however, run the risk of doing the opposite of the process.
It is common for members of this fraction to examine themselves by looking at how other people view them. This is very dangerous, and it could ruin a person’s life because people are different. While some people, based on their culture, may hate or despise a certain characteristic, some people may have no problem with it, or they may even fancy it. The community centre in discussion has several programs which promote the recognition and appreciation of self.
This ensures that people know their strengths and weaknesses and use their strengths to serve others and accept their weaknesses because no man is an island. The centre encourages the culture of accepting one’s weaknesses through several activities which require teamwork. The centre practices a culture where one is weak, another one offers support, and the other person offers support where the other person is weak. This culture leads to the prevalence of love, peace and harmony, where no one feels inferior or superior to another person.
Vocational Education
Among the teenagers whom I interacted with at the centre, some of them were working at different sections in the centre, including but not limited to the food pantry. The importance of vocational education is that it equips the persons involved with extra skills, which not only increases their understanding in school but also helps them decide which professions to attach themselves to in the future (Arnett, 2017).
Conclusion
In conclusion, my experience at 14th & Chestnut Community Center has enabled me to understand how to handle some of the challenges experienced by adolescents and emerging adults, knowledge which will be very helpful to me and other people, now and in future.
References
Arnett, J. (2017). Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood: A Cultural Approach (6th Ed). Pearson.
Cite This Work
To export a reference to this article please select a referencing stye below:
