Community Service Learning in Du Page County for the Village of Lombard is an underlying requirement to Illinois residency and homeownership, not always publicly acknowledged nor explained to newcomers to the western suburbs “out in the boonies”, but rather implicitly, tacitly, and sometimes unwillingly assigned. However, some Lombard resident homeowners are given more community service than others without compensation for the consequences of the volunteer service in their neighborhood. Perhaps the Village of Lombard and Du Page County take advantage of gullible Chicago newcomers as resident homeowners to the western suburbs, “the farther the fools move away from the Windy City or others areas in Illinois”, just because they are “Chicagoans”, the same people become casualties, victims of crime and suffer from damages, losses, and liabilities.
Since my deceased father, Mr. Roberto Hung, J.D. purchased a Lombard historic brick bungalow built in 1927, at 502 South Westmore-Meyer s Road and Washington Boulevard, in Du Page County, Illinois, I have had to participate and volunteer in more community service learning projects than other neighbor resident homeowner and tenants in the Eastgate Center Community, along Westmore-Meyers Road, one mile north of Route 38, Roosevelt Road.
It started while I worked for the College of Du Page as faculty, I volunteered for the Latin American Committee and the European Heritage Committee in Glen Ellyn and Lombard.
It started while I worked as Faculty at the College of DuPage and added Professional Development Credit Units (CEUs) for Community Service Learning coordinated by Kathleen Hennessey for Adult Continuing Education, after my father died on June 25, 1998. I was invited to participate and volunteer for the Friends of the Library at the Helen M. Plum Memorial Library, who are also Friends of the Lombard Garden Club and the Lombard Service League, in Lilac Town, the home of the Lilac Festival at Lilacia Park, which was bequeathed to the Village of Lombard by Colonel William R. Plum in 1927. After the closing of the Estate of Mr. Roberto Hung Supplemental Health Care Trust in Lombard by the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit Court in Wheaton, Du Page County, the Friends of the Court program invited volunteers to participate in the court advocacy program where assigned volunteers visited court wards on-site, upon assignment by the Friends of the Court.
As a friend of the 18th Judicial Circuit Court in Wheaton, I was assigned to visit court wards by car, at my own expense for mileage, gasoline, telephone calls, and U.S. postage for mailing notices for visits by the Court Advocacy program when there was no telephone number available, for those who lived at Lexington Health Care in Lombard and Elmhurst, the Ray Graham Association for People with Disabilities, Iona Glos Intermediate Care for the Mentally Retarded in Addison, Marklund Children's Home for Developmental Disabilities in Bloomingdale, Deicke Home for the Retarded in Lombard, as well as other individuals with terminal disease and disabilities, granted court ward status and funding in Addison, Elmhurst, The Cove Landing in Lombard, and Bensenville, Illinois.
During the expected Community Service as a volunteer, I was paying for car mileage, gasoline, telephone calls, U.S. postage for mailing, as well as printing in black/white, and color community newsletters, flyers, posters, correspondence, and other mailings for contact in Du Page County, Illinois. The Community Service Learning experience became more expensive by the days, weeks, and months, than I could afford to absorb as a consultant—when no one in the Village of Lombard helped me to get referrals for business or freelance assignments, or even job prospects or leads. The Community Service Learning experience and lifestyle reveals that “it is meant for retired seniors with a fixed income who have to pay for their volunteer service” in York Township, Lombard, and Du Page County, Illinois. The amazing revelation is that, I am still not a retired person nor a senior citizen in Lombard, Du Page County, Illinois—I am too young to be retired and my peers for the Baby Boomer Generation are the middle working class of the nation in the 21st century.
For some reason, the Village of Lombard and York Township expect me to volunteer in community service for the rest of my life and not have any gainful income other than poverty for having purchased a Lombard historic brick bungalow, as a resident homeowner, and U.S. citizen for the last seventeen years in Du Page County, Illinois, U.S.A.
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