Our involvement with the annual Martin Luther King Jr Day of Service and Leadership began with a spectacular opening message from Kyle Bacon, encouraging listeners to serve, not help, and to fully engage with the people and causes we serve. The bus ride to our service site was a time to connect with our peers, many of whom were undergraduates at GW. It was great to hear about their interests and discuss their commitments to service.
This year, our service site was The Asylum Seeker Assistance Project (ASAP). ASAP wasfounded in 2016 andis the “first and only nonprofit dedicated to serving the estimated 25,000 asylum seekers living in the D.C. Metro region.” When we arrived, many of us were a little confused about what the particular definition of an asylum seeker was, so appreciated the briefing from ASAP’s founder and executive director. According to UNESCO, while “the definition of asylum seeker may vary from country to country, depending on the laws of each country….in most countries, the terms asylum seeker/asylee and refugee differ only in regard to the place where an individual asks for protection.”
In our hours of service, we were able to tackle tasks that reinforced our skills and strengths. First- year fellows Ian Tang and Helen-Christy Powell worked to make computers and printers operable, while second-year fellows Dor Hirsh Bar Gai and Alex Wang, first-year fellow Matthew Basista, and Program Director Robert Snyder painstakingly assembled furniture for ASAP’s office space, and first-year fellows Gaby Madrid and Emily Somberg worked to give the hallways a fresh coat of paint. Even though we all tackled different tasks for ASAP, we were all working towards a common goal of service. While many Fellows (myself included) would have liked to engage even more with ASAP and the individuals the project serves, it was nice to reflect on our service experiences, and discuss why it is such a critical pillar of the program.