{"id":776465,"date":"2025-11-05T11:00:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T10:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.servethecity.paris\/?p=776465"},"modified":"2026-01-29T22:22:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T21:22:40","slug":"reflection-on-my-time-with-serve-the-city-adam-ewing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.servethecity.paris\/fr\/2025\/11\/05\/reflection-on-my-time-with-serve-the-city-adam-ewing\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflection on my Time with Serve the City – Adam Ewing"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had the privilege of working as a S.E.R.V.E. intern at Serve the City Paris during the <\/span>remarkably warm summer of 2025\u2014I cannot understate how this experience proved to be <\/span>enormously invaluable in shaping my goals: as a member of a team, a volunteer, and an <\/span>organizer in my own regard.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was excited to be accepted into the program for the initial twofold reason of finding <\/span>justification for prolonging my stay in a city that I\u2019d fallen in love with and because I wanted to <\/span>engage with the grittier side of that city, the side that did not go well with the six story Lutetian <\/span>limestone h\u00f4te particulier-lined boulevards. I hoped to become a player in what truly makes <\/span>Paris beautiful: the organization and the solidarity. And so I entered into the Impact Caf\u00e9 with <\/span>little more than this excuse and abstract ideal.<\/span><\/p>\n

But from the very start of my time working for Serve the City my desire to come to work <\/span>every morning began to change\u2014I started to care deeply about the individuals I worked <\/span>for\u2014and with\u2014the human beings who devoted their lives to helping others, and those \u201cothers\u201d <\/span>who in turn I began to know as friends. That is the spirit of Serve the City, this capacity to <\/span>connect individually with those around you, to be inspired by them, to learn from them, and to be <\/span>pushed by them.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was individuals such as Simeon, Deren, and Nate who all guided me to reevaluate <\/span>what it means to help one another. Zuzanna, Julie, and Safi all led by and through a clear <\/span>passion for their work. And Musa, Mohaned and Mohammed all illustrated a love of life and an <\/span>extremity of courage that deeply and enduringly inspired me. That was it\u2014the beauty of Serve <\/span>the City is the intimacy itself, the proximity and transparency that you have with those who you <\/span>are working alongside and those who you are helping.<\/span><\/p>\n

It seems then like after all, my reasons for joining STCP were misplaced\u2014it wasn\u2019t the <\/span>city that gave me a sense of meaning, nor the abstract idea of doing \u201cgood\u201d that pushed me to <\/span>think creatively about the problems of organizing events, distributing water and electrolytes, or <\/span>teaching English\u2014it was, of course, the smiling face, the handshake, the wave from across the <\/span>caf\u00e9.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, two short months after this summer with STCP, I find myself writing a thesis on <\/span>consequences of the label \u201ccrise\u201d of the immigration situation in France and I am planning to <\/span>pursue a path that will eventually lead toward legal work with immigrants and refugees. And it <\/span>was the people at Serve the City, every one of them, who I have to thank.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had the privilege of working as a S.E.R.V.E. intern at Serve the City Paris during the remarkably warm summer of 2025\u2014I cannot understate how this experience proved to be enormously invaluable in shaping my goals: as a member of a team, a volunteer, and an organizer in my own regard. I was excited to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":115,"featured_media":776633,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-776465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servethecity.paris\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servethecity.paris\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servethecity.paris\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servethecity.paris\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servethecity.paris\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776465"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.servethecity.paris\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":776638,"href":"https:\/\/www.servethecity.paris\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776465\/revisions\/776638"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servethecity.paris\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servethecity.paris\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servethecity.paris\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servethecity.paris\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}