Joanne Guillet, a social psychology major in her final year at UMB, has been a shining example of what it means to give back to the community. The list of charitable organizations she is associated with is impressive: Beacon Voyages for Service (BVS), Habitat for Humanity, and Project Serve. Guillet was also a part of AmeriCorps, and over the course of one year, she completed 675 hours of service. Guillet derives a strong sense of satisfaction from her work. “Serving my community brings me the type of joy that I cannot find elsewhere,” Guillet said.
Throughout high school, Guillet was involved in multiple community service programs. However, Guillet explained, “It was not until my first BVS trip to New Orleans that my passion for service began to flourish.” The trip took place during spring break 2009 and students worked together to fix one of the houses affected by Hurricane Katrina.
“I was not exactly sure what to expect,” Guillet said. “I was going to a place I had never visited with a group of people that did not know. I felt completely outside of my comfort zone, which caused me to be very reserved at first, [but] we worked together as a team. As we did, we built a sense of community and began to grow closer to one another.”
The house that these students worked on was the home of a woman who Guillet refers to as “Aunty Shirley,” who she said helped her understand the value of community service. “In our minds, all we had done was fix some landscape, scrapped some stuff in her house, and did some painting,” Guillet said. “Yet, Aunty Shirley fed us everyday and constantly kept on expressing how much our work meant to her. At the end of our trip, Aunty Shirley burst into tears. What we believed to be minor improvements was, for her, a big deal. In her eyes we were there to restore what the hurricane took apart.”
The trip to New Orleans taught Guillet many valuable lessons and taught her that she has something to contribute. “It was a lot of self discovery,” she said. “This showed me that the possibilities are limitless, even for a young mother like me. This trip gave me back my worth.
“It allowed me to view community service through different lenses. Service is something that is reciprocal: just as I am helping them, they are helping me. Therefore, one cannot ignore the expertise of those one is helping.”
After this trip, Guillet believes she became addicted to service and this inspired her to get involved in many other service programs at UMB. Recently, Sherrod Williams, the Director of the Office of Student Leadership and Community Enguagement, put Guillet in charge of a program on campus called Project Serve.
Project Serve is a new initiative from Student Activities to get UMB students involved with community service. Guillet explained, “The program has two dimensions: a long-term and a short-term.”
The long-term aspect tries to build partnerships with community organizations and the university by trying to get students to do service for an extended period of time.
Its short-term aspect provides different one-time opportunities for students to get involved. It is also in charge of programming activities on campus to raise awareness. For instance, the UMB Day of Service on Oct. 22 came through Project Serve as well as the welcome week event Bikes Not Bombs.
Project Serve has a number of things planned for this upcoming spring. Guillet said, “National Volunteer week is in April, and Project Serve has a number of things in which students can get involved. Also there will be another UMB Day of Service.”
Aside from being a full-time student involved with community service, Guillet is also a single mother.
“Juggling everything I am involved with in school as well as taking care of my son has been a difficult task to handle,” she said, “Hard is the only word to describe it.”
“Fortunately,” Guillet continued, “I have been blessed with the support from my family. They have helped me every step of the way and have taken care of him while I am in school. Nehemiah is three years old now, and I am sure that we both would not be where we are right now if it had not been for my family.”
One day Guillet would like to start an academic institution targeted mainly at minority youth, disadvantaged youth, and orphans.
“I do not think that students should wait until they get to college before they gain leadership skills, before they learn about different cultures,” she said. “This should be something that they learn as they grow. I want students to learn beyond what the textbook says and discover the true history.”
