Taylor's Empower Walk

Charlie and Eileen’s story and their experience with Autism Speaks

Understanding the importance of community service and the benefits for the receiver and the giver.

Article about benefits of students doing community service

This article is about the benefits that community outreach have on undergraduate students. The study was conducted by providing entry and exit tickets to various college students who performed volunteer work wiht elementary, middle, and high school students to see how it affected them and their future careers. The study showed that majority of the students stated they benefited a lot from doing the volunteer work. They were able to gain experience in their field of work and undetrstand more about community service. Some students reported not knowing much about volunteering and community outreach a that this opportunity provided more knowledge for them with outreach services. Teachers of the younger students reported that the experience was beneficial for them and for the students learning from the college students. The authors are all scientists and teachers at different Universities who have much experience with research analysis and data collection. The authors were able to appeal to the readers values and emotions and to the subjects in the research study which the results show. The target audeince for this article is towards college students and professors to show the benefits of community outreach. The language of the article is somewhat technical but the non scientific reader like myself could understand the content easily. My personal reaction after reading this study was feeling a sense of joy to the fact that educators are using community outreach to help other younger students. I am a teacher myself so to see the community outreach going on in the school system is great and I loved that this experience benefited everyone involved from the reasearchers, college students, younger students, and the teachers.

March 25, 2026

I have always enjoyed doing community service, but when it became something that was personal for me, it became a deeper connection. The picture on the right is from the first year I did the Empower Walk with Autism Speaks. I was able to spread awareness around my neighborhood and at work. Not only did I raise the most funds in Fort Myers that year, but I was also able to get my neighbors to join my family in the walk with us. Now I do this every year, trying to raise money for research, support, services, and more awareness for autistic individuals, and I look forward to it every year. Taking this class this semester has taught me more about community service by reading the professor’s experiences with it in our course and on his blog, reading community service articles, and watching community service impact videos. I made more of a connection on how it isn’t just the receiver that feels the joy and takeaways from the service, but also the giver. During my empower walk journey this spring, I have been trying to reflect on how I can feel that joy as the giver of the volunteering and service, and it’s a great experience. This year, the Autism Speaks Empower Walk location is in Miami, so I will not be able to attend the event. I will be walking this year with some of my co-workers to support autism and again with my family to raise awareness. For any of my fellow FIU classmates who would like to learn more about the Miami walk, just click on the button at the top of this page, and it will take you right to the page. I encourage you to join the walk; it is a life-changing experience. I will be doing my walks next week and will be posting pictures and more information after that, so stay tuned for more!

April 2, 2026

I completed an awareness walk with my coworkers on March 31st and a walkd with my family on April 2nd. Doing the walk with my coworkers was an amazing experience because I was able to talk more about Autism, how it impacts my life, and the importance of raising awareness at our school. our school has one of the largest Execptional Education units in the county and many of our students are on the spectrum. Being able to inform more teachers about Autism and inclusion within our school was wonderful. In the process of spreading awareness I was able to raise close to $500 from teachers and administration around the school that all went to the non-profit organization Autism Speaks. Some of my coworkers and myself got together before school on the 31st and walked around the school a few times discussing Autism and how we can do more at our school to help our students. On April 2nd my husband, my two kids, and I went on a walk together around our community. We try to do our Autism awareness walk every year on April 2nd because this is National Autism Awareness Day. We wore shirts that promote Autism awareness and were able to talk to a few people in the neighborhood who asked about our shirts and spread more awareness and acceptance. This experience is so important to me every year and I love to advocate for my children and inform more poeple about Autism every year. Thanks to this class and more that I learned about community outreach I took more time to reflect this year on how the fundraising walk impacted me as the giver. Doing community service and voluntering is such a benefical experience that everyone should go through. With this community service I was able to educate more teachers and students about autism awareness and provide more funds to go towards research and services. As the research article on my blog states “students learn the importance of giving back to the community and learn how to talk to the public and communicate concepts. The outreach experience will help produce educated adults in the community.” (Martin, J. et al., 2025). We need more community service learning in the world becuase it benefits the giver and the receiver and I will continue to do my small part every year.