Community Service: Getting Your Child Involved

Back in the day, as my kids would say, when I was 9 or 10, I would leave my home near Atlanta University and head for the grocery store some five blocks away with my sister who was almost three years my junior. We would have a small list of things to bring back: milk, bread, diapers for my baby brother - a small bag that my sister could carry alone. But we would never leave the neighborhood without asking the elderly people across the street- three old ladies in three different houses- if they needed anything. It was the family rule- if you go to the store you ask the old people it they need anything because one day you will be old and need someone to take care of you. My parents lived by this.

Of course they always needed something. Always. But it was never too much, never too heavy. When we brought it back to them, even put it away in their cupboards, they would try to give us a tip and we had to refuse. Also part of my parent's belief. Sometimes we swept their steps and raked leaves out of their yards when we could have been running up the street screaming absolutely nothing important at the top of our lungs. They didn't call it community service then, but that’s what it was. You served your community by doing something for the people in it. Young people got involved because they were supposed to.

There were no awards then, no scholarships, and no committees chastising youth for inaction. Instead there was a community that worked together- parents watched others children while they played without being asked, the young man cursing down the street was corrected by a man that he saw everyday that wasn't his father (and then the man went and told his father) and your knee got bandaged by someone else's mom if yours wasn't around. It was called community- we learned from example. Nowadays we write a check to our favorite charity, or have a payroll deduction that lowers our taxes so we have helped our fellow man and gotten a bonus on the side. Its no wonder many parents can't figure how to get their kids started in community service.

First of all you don't call it that. Community service doesn't have a bad rap, it’s just not what your average young person wants to do with their spare time. A few years back at the first Presidential Youth Summit I couldn't get through Philadelphia because several young people were protesting forced community service. Their "community" of young people had gotten together to fight for a cause they believed in. At least they were doing something about it. But college applications are filled with questions about what you have done for your fellow man, and more high schools are requiring a specific number of hours of service. Sometimes its as easy as asking your guidance counselor for a suggestion or seeing what programs the school has to offer and just falling into place with others who are doing the same thing.

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