The organization that I volunteered at this semester is a non-profit organization centered in the city of Redlands and caters to a variety of people in the city and provides a number of successful and vital resources for these people. I volunteered there all semester and found a great depth of care for those that they were helping and a firm structural foundation on which the organization was built. The volunteers at this organization are dedicated, kind, and caring individuals who are really trying to do the best for these families, but are operating within a structural system that doesn’t always allow them to reach everyone or help in the best ways possible. There are certainly failings on behalf of the organization itself, but these people and this group is really doing what they can for those they are trying to help, but seem to be met with obstacles at many points.

The organization I volunteered with feels the controls of our structural system in a variety of ways, but mainly in dealing with getting families in need into low-income housing. As we discovered pretty early on in the semester, it is not easy to live on a minimum wage budget in our city, and there are little to no options for quality, low cost apartments for those in need. In my time at this organization I have observed the frustration most of the workers feel that there is only a limited amount of services that they can provide for these families, and sometimes there isn’t anything they can do to keep them in quality housing. I think that if they could, and if they were supported by the city, they would be building low-income housing all over the city, because as I’ve observed and talked to different volunteers about, they see this as one of the biggest issues facing their clients today.

I know that the this organization does everything in their power to help families throughout the Inland Empire get back on their feet and helps them in any and every way that they can, but sometimes it felt like it wasn’t enough, especially after talking to an employee from an organization that builds low income housing and hearing everything he was able to do in his state for homeless and borderline homeless families and individuals. One of the most glaring problems with my volunteer site is that they are stuck in a small town where the majority of the citizens are conservative and focused on maintaining a certain image about the city and those that run the organization cannot really move in any direction to enact change on a larger scale. I think it’s hard to criticize this organization for this issue, as it is not something that anyone can really control. I know that if they could, this organization would be building low-income housing all over the place and lobbying congress to change the laws, regulations and “red tape” policies that keep people in poverty throughout the country, but they are a small organization trying their best to help the people in their community, and they are doing the best they can under these circumstances.