Service with Shared Hope International
I had made a 300 hour commitment to Jumpstart, which I unfortunately wasn't able to complete by the time the school year ended. As such, I was tasked with finishing the 30 or so odd hours I had left by continuing to volunteer in some capacity within the state of Washington. After being set up through some volunteer agency in Vancouver, I found myself working at Shared Hope International.
The organization was started by Washington Congresswoman Linda Smith as a way to combat sex trafficking. This endeavor takes an astounding number of forms. On the preventative side, the organization is involved in promoting awareness of issues surrounding sex trafficking, training individuals in communities, conducting research, and pushing legislative and justice initiatives. Then of course it is involved in various humanitarian efforts around the world to restore the victims of sex trafficking to a sense of normalcy.
My job was to go through and call people who had contributed to the organization in the past and inform them about upcoming events, ways they could help, and more information about sex trafficking in general. I was handed a script, a phone, and pages upon pages of names. It sounds straightforward, but I was extremely intimidated the first time I picked up the phone and prepared to dial the number. I remember my voice being barely audible and cracking slightly as I read through the script, and I could tell the person on the other end of the line was rolling his eyes or was no doubt muttering under his breath about incompetency or the call being a waste of time.
And it was. Those first calls were a waste of time for all those good people, and that fault fell entirely on my shoulders. Because I'll be honest, my only intention initially for the job was to just do it. It was something I was required to do. And so it should not have been surprising that people could tell that I was reading off a script and trying to sound like the words coming out of my mouth actually meant something to me.
Then one day I was joined by a woman who I had seen working around the office. She was one of the volunteer coordinators, and she decided to make a couple of calls with me. I listened in on her, and the difference between her and me was palpable. I tried my best to be cheery and warm on the phone, but her radiance was genuine and pure. She believed wholeheartedly in everything she read off the script, and just in the way she was responding on the phone I could tell that the person on the other end could tell too. But the most incredible part of this was when she began talking about the event that we were supposed to be informing these people about. It was a screening of a film the organization had produced called "Chosen", about teenagers in America who had been sexually trafficked. The volunteer making the call described the film, and then said something along the lines "I'm really glad that people are going to have the chance to hear my story on such a scale."
I was floored. Here was an actual victim of sexual trafficking, the subject of a documentary that Shared Hope had produced, and she was here, making phone calls with me. Seeing her, smiling and sharing her experience on the phone, really changed something for me. I had never doubted that the organization was doing something good, but seeing this woman so healthy and so inspired to work for an organization that was trying to do something about the experience she had been through really put into perspective all the good work that was capable. And it made it clear that if I didn't put in my best efforts, I would be doing a disservice to the organization and - more importantly - to this woman.
So I learned as much as I could about the organization, its tenets and values and mission. I memorized the script, and when I called people, I poured out my heart. I kept the image of that woman on the phone, smiling, in the back of my mind as I told people about the horrors of sex trafficking but that there was hope. I had seen that hope.
It only followed that I got really good at making phone calls. I gradually lost all awkwardness and intimidation, spoke with confidence and enunciated clearly. People working in the office congratulated me every day on the great work I was doing, telling me it was a joy to listen to me spread the message. I lapped up the praise, not to validate my own abilities, but as a way of knowing that I was doing good by the woman who had inspired me.
I thought that I would come away from this experience with nothing at all. I thought it was going to be just a way to fulfill some volunteer hours. But instead, I picked up a number of technical skills. I'm a much better speaker in terms of articulation and projection, and I know how to navigate tricky conversations in such a way as to sound positive and professional (there were many people who thought I was soliciting, so I had to really develop a cheery tone that did not ring false). Working in a call center may not initially seem applicable to Pre-Med, but what I was working on during that time was the "bedside manner" that poses such an issue for physicians. The most important takeaway from this experience was that you can't half-ass anything, and anything you do has to be something that you believe in and are emotionally connected to in order to mean something. It definitely meant something to me when I had to leave at the end of the summer, by which time I had completed far more than the 30 hours that I had been responsible for.
The organization was started by Washington Congresswoman Linda Smith as a way to combat sex trafficking. This endeavor takes an astounding number of forms. On the preventative side, the organization is involved in promoting awareness of issues surrounding sex trafficking, training individuals in communities, conducting research, and pushing legislative and justice initiatives. Then of course it is involved in various humanitarian efforts around the world to restore the victims of sex trafficking to a sense of normalcy.
My job was to go through and call people who had contributed to the organization in the past and inform them about upcoming events, ways they could help, and more information about sex trafficking in general. I was handed a script, a phone, and pages upon pages of names. It sounds straightforward, but I was extremely intimidated the first time I picked up the phone and prepared to dial the number. I remember my voice being barely audible and cracking slightly as I read through the script, and I could tell the person on the other end of the line was rolling his eyes or was no doubt muttering under his breath about incompetency or the call being a waste of time.
And it was. Those first calls were a waste of time for all those good people, and that fault fell entirely on my shoulders. Because I'll be honest, my only intention initially for the job was to just do it. It was something I was required to do. And so it should not have been surprising that people could tell that I was reading off a script and trying to sound like the words coming out of my mouth actually meant something to me.
Then one day I was joined by a woman who I had seen working around the office. She was one of the volunteer coordinators, and she decided to make a couple of calls with me. I listened in on her, and the difference between her and me was palpable. I tried my best to be cheery and warm on the phone, but her radiance was genuine and pure. She believed wholeheartedly in everything she read off the script, and just in the way she was responding on the phone I could tell that the person on the other end could tell too. But the most incredible part of this was when she began talking about the event that we were supposed to be informing these people about. It was a screening of a film the organization had produced called "Chosen", about teenagers in America who had been sexually trafficked. The volunteer making the call described the film, and then said something along the lines "I'm really glad that people are going to have the chance to hear my story on such a scale."
I was floored. Here was an actual victim of sexual trafficking, the subject of a documentary that Shared Hope had produced, and she was here, making phone calls with me. Seeing her, smiling and sharing her experience on the phone, really changed something for me. I had never doubted that the organization was doing something good, but seeing this woman so healthy and so inspired to work for an organization that was trying to do something about the experience she had been through really put into perspective all the good work that was capable. And it made it clear that if I didn't put in my best efforts, I would be doing a disservice to the organization and - more importantly - to this woman.
So I learned as much as I could about the organization, its tenets and values and mission. I memorized the script, and when I called people, I poured out my heart. I kept the image of that woman on the phone, smiling, in the back of my mind as I told people about the horrors of sex trafficking but that there was hope. I had seen that hope.
It only followed that I got really good at making phone calls. I gradually lost all awkwardness and intimidation, spoke with confidence and enunciated clearly. People working in the office congratulated me every day on the great work I was doing, telling me it was a joy to listen to me spread the message. I lapped up the praise, not to validate my own abilities, but as a way of knowing that I was doing good by the woman who had inspired me.
I thought that I would come away from this experience with nothing at all. I thought it was going to be just a way to fulfill some volunteer hours. But instead, I picked up a number of technical skills. I'm a much better speaker in terms of articulation and projection, and I know how to navigate tricky conversations in such a way as to sound positive and professional (there were many people who thought I was soliciting, so I had to really develop a cheery tone that did not ring false). Working in a call center may not initially seem applicable to Pre-Med, but what I was working on during that time was the "bedside manner" that poses such an issue for physicians. The most important takeaway from this experience was that you can't half-ass anything, and anything you do has to be something that you believe in and are emotionally connected to in order to mean something. It definitely meant something to me when I had to leave at the end of the summer, by which time I had completed far more than the 30 hours that I had been responsible for.