An Enlightening Experience: How Volunteering Enhanced Our Course

A recent volunteer session at the Baldwin Center in Pontiac was incorporated into our English 200: Blogging class. I know what you're thinking, "How does volunteering at a food and clothing center relate to an English class?" Well, our professor realized the potential the Baldwin Center had to enhance her course and its participants, and built a section around it. Not only did our experience enlighten us to problems present in our neighboring communities, but it effectively aided our project our project to develop a persuasive "Blog for a Cause."

Though many of us may be intimidated or afraid of our rough and tough city of Pontiac, visiting the center was not as bad as the stigma that Pontiac holds. Leaving our jackets and narrow-minds at the door, we all rolled up our sleeves and immersed ourselves in serving a great cause. Our class was split into two groups that visited the center on separate days, while also being involved in different organizational tasks at the Baldwin Center. The sessions included helping to arrange the newly developed "Food Pantry," and the incredibly effective "Clothes Closet." Although the site did seem a bit chaotic, it became a comfortable sort of chaos. We began to feel a sense of camaraderie with classmates, our professor, and new-found mentors at the Baldwin Center.

The inspirational and compassionate atmosphere of the Baldwin Center created a new motivation in us to react to an ongoing issue, providing help and support for our struggling community members. With numerous ways to help those in a community close to home, active involvement is easily incorporated into any syllabus. We hope that you consider the benefits volunteering can have on your students' college experience and add your own idea into your future classes!

Note: For more student experiences, check out our about me section.

The History of the Baldwin Center

Founded by the Baldwin Avenue United Methodist Church, the Baldwin Center was created in 1981 when the need for assistance in Pontiac was at its greatest. With the withdrawal of General Motors from Pontiac, many people lost their only means of support. The Baldwin Center stepped in to help, with their mission to "feed, clothe, educate, and empower all disadvantaged men, women, and children in the community of Pontiac."

The Baldwin Center offers 25 different programs including a soup kitchen, emergency shelter, day care, youth programs, tutoring, shower use for the homeless, laundry, education on healthy living, a warming center for the homeless, counseling, skill building opportunities, and a clothes closet.

The Baldwin Center has few full-time employees and relies on volunteers to meet the massive need for assistance in Pontiac.

Source: The Baldwin Center

Alcoholism and the Great American Writer

Many of the iconic novels and poems that English majors are required to read in Literature classes were written by men and women suffering from substance abuse problems. Dorothy Parker, my favorite short story author and poet, severely abused alcohol and survived death by her own hand on multiple occasions. The great Edgar Allen Poe also had a deep alcohol and drug dependency. Even Ernest Hemmingway succumbed to suicide, largely due to his indulgence in drink.


As writers ourselves, we inherit the duty to end the stereotype of the drunk, lonely writer, until it no longer plagues our craft. Imagine if Parker, Poe, and Hemmingway got the help that they needed to overcome their chemical dependency? What other great works could they have penned? How many more masterpieces could we be studying from these prolific authors? Unfortunately, we will never know.


I am sure we can agree that the myth of substance abuse enhancing a writer's creativity is just that--a myth. As Flannery O'Connor wisely stated, "I suppose there have been enough genuinely lonely suffering novelists to make this seem a reasonable myth, but there is every reason to suppose that such cases are the result of less admirable qualities in these writers, qualities which have nothing to do with the vocation of writing itself." We need to discourage this notion that alcoholism and creative writing go hand in hand.


As English Professors, you will be well served to incorporate, into your curriculum, a volunteering activity at the Baldwin Center. Recently, Maplegrove Center began teaching an eight week substance abuse prevention workshop to students involved in the after school program. The Baldwin Center can always use a helping hand and this program would be a great area for English majors to volunteer. Your students will not only gain new experiences that might serve as inspiration for their own personal writing, but they could easily encounter fellow writers and literature fans--ones who need just a little encouragement and empathy. Members of your class will have the opportunity to form mutually beneficial friendships with these kids- friendships that might reduce the tragedies reminiscent of the ones faced by Parker, Poe, and Hemmingway. Your students will have the chance to see, first-hand, that intoxication is detrimental to the writing process, not beneficial. It will also be a great way, as a professor, to pay homage to the suffering, literary icons, both past AND present.

What Can History Majors Gain From Volunteering?

It is hard to understand how impacted a city is by its one industry being removed. Merely talking about the hard times that follow is not enough to understand what happens. By volunteering at the Baldwin Center, history majors can learn first hand what happens when poor economic times fall on a city.

Classes studying American history, Michigan history, the automotive industry, manufacturing industry, and the United States economy would benefit greatly from taking time to volunteer at the Baldwin Center. The City of Pontiac was built around the General Motors manufacturing jobs and when those jobs were ended, hundreds were out of work. The current economic difficulties make the city a excellent analogue to cities suffering during the Great Depression.

Having firsthand experience with the effects of manufacturing plants closing can help students understand, for example, what a unemployed person was going through during the Great Depression, what striking coal miners in 1902 were faced with when they protested their poor wages or what kind of impact the Settlement Houses had on the communities they served. A modern day Settlement House, the Baldwin Center supplies food, clothing and education aimed at getting people back on their feet. Volunteering there can bring the past to life and give students a greater understanding of what life was like for people struggling to make a living.

Bilingual Services

When it comes to foreign language majors, it may seem at first that it's a skill set not easily applied to volunteer work, but I find that far from the truth. Poverty does not discriminate, and while the poor are not necessarily uneducated, oftentimes the uneducated find themselves poor due to a lack of ability and understanding of how to better and take control their lives. I've personally been touched by the plight of many strong, inspiring, and hard working individuals who have immigrated here from other countries for the opportunities available here, only to find themselves overwhelmed by the language and cultural barriers.

For most of my teenage years, I helped my mother and her coworkers with whatever I could. From help filling out forms to tutoring them in English, I found myself gaining real world experience in translation and interpretation. More than that, every single person I helped was a wealth of cultural information, and they were always glad to teach me more Chinese in return. The things I learned working with them can't be learned or taught in any classroom, and I'm certain they will help me as I move forward through life.

Having this experience of my own, I highly endorse that those pursuing a major in foreign languages to volunteer some of their time working with immigrants struggling with English. There aren't any groups specific to this cause, but after visiting Baldwin Center I'm certain that if the idea of extending bilingual services to the local community is presented, a way will be found.

The need for it is very real, as oftentimes low-income households aren't even aware of the services offered to people in their situations because they simply don't know those services are out there.

Even if they do, such services are easy to misunderstand, and I've personally known people who have dismissed the idea of applying for and seeking out services they very much need simply because they've assumed they don't qualify.

Being trapped behind a language barrier is a very painful thing, because such people are easily dismissed and even discriminated against for appearing less intelligent than they are, simply because they don't know how to convey their level of thinking in a language they're unfamiliar with. To work with these wonderful people, not only will the students be doing a great service to the community, they'll gain invaluable experience.

Theater at the Baldwin Center

The theater department at OU could benefit tremendously from doing volunteer theater at the Baldwin Center. Many students have never worked at any other venue aside from school, and some in-the-field experience would be beneficial to their education.

The Baldwin center is close to campus, and is always looking for new volunteer opportunities. They are a diverse institution that would be more than happy to collaborate with OU for the of benefit the Pontiac community. MTD’s spring children’s show could easily make the Center a stop on their tour. There is a large cafeteria which could be used as a stage for a few hours.

Many students are also in the theater program to become teachers. With minimal resources they could work with children at the Center. Schools often cut art programs, and this would serve the dual purpose of bringing some of that back to children, while giving OU students some practical theater experience.