Help from Your City

What is the more important goal of any kid?  Well if you are a kid or have a kid, you can guess the answer right away.  It isn’t concerns about having enough to eat, where they will sleep or whether the bomb will be dropped tomorrow.  No the worse fate that can befall a kid is summed up in one plea – “What can I do?  I’m bored!”

It may seem like an odd suggestion then, to both the kid out there and to the ones charged with battling this dread affliction of “boredom” in the kids on our lives that there is one medicine for boredom that you may not have given a chance.  And that is community service.

Now this may be a tough sell because on the surface, community service isn’t a toy or a video game or something designed to entertain kids.  It is something so much different from any of those repacked amusements.  It’s for real.  Lots of computer games are made to give you the feeling you created something whether it’s a city, an alien planet or a spaceship.  But when you turn off the computer, that creation is gone because it never was real.

With community service you DO create something and not by talking to a pretend civilization on the computer screen.  Oh no, what you create is real, it will be there tomorrow when you go back.  And you are dealing with real people and solving real problems.  All of a sudden, the kid isn’t so much a kid any more.  He or she is a valuable member of the community, just like an adult and there is not better feeling than that!

There are tons of other great reasons to get involved in community service this summer or as a hobby to replace the endless hours playing computer games.  There is such a huge variety of things you can get involved with through community service that you can get your hands dirty on a hobby or an interest that you really want to be involved in.  And you won’t be just enjoying that great interest by yourself because you will be working side by side with other youths, older kids in college or beyond, young dads and moms and even grandparents all who don’t want to sit home and be bored and would rather be out there being somebody for someone else.

Volunteering can even give you as much variety as playing games or fooling around with toys might give you and you don’t have to beg mom and dad to buy you a thing.  In most towns or cities, there is a community service coordinating group that will have dozens and dozens of ways you can plug in and do something for someone else.  Some of the great ways you can pitch in and help out might include…

*    Helping stock food that will go out to famine victims or hurricane survivors.

*    Serving meals at the homeless shelter to families who really need the help.  In fact, after the meal is over, those homeless kids would like nothing more than to spend a few hours with some new friends enjoying a simple game or just learning about each other.

*    Help the Special Olympics put on one of their athletic outings.  If you or your kids love sports, what better way to put that skill to work helping others than letting someone who isn’t as lucky as you know that great feeling of winning a race or sinking a basket.

*    Reading to a shut in or to the blind.  You think its great hearing a story?  You haven’t had a thrill until you read it to someone else who has never heard it and you see their face as they enjoy every new twist and turn of the plot.

Community service gives young hands a chance to really make a difference to others in the community.  But maybe the most important thing it does is it opens kid’s eyes to how great it is to stop worrying about themselves and help someone else out for a little while.  It is the kind of addiction your mom and dad will be glad you got into.  And chances are you will never again complain, “What can I do?  I’m bored!”

At one time the method for keeping the armed forces supplied with young men was done with a draft in which some form of selection process required by law that young men just out of high school to join the military to serve a term of service.  But in the 1970s, the United States moved to an all volunteer army and our nation has been defended by this type of military system ever since.

The truth is that for decades, the idea of volunteering to serve a stint in the armed forces was never in question in households in America.  Until the problems of the draft relative to the Vietnam conflict, in most homes in America, parents taught their youth that going into the military was the natural next step after high school but before going into college.  Many older Americans today can remember learning from their parents that it is a boy’s civic duty to serve their country in the military and that becoming a proud member of America’s fighting forces is what truly gave a youth his credentials to be “a man”.

While social change has reduced the awareness in the population that service in the military is actually the highest form of community service, the military continues to be a viable way that a young person can pay back this great country for the honor of their citizenship and start their lives as adults at the same time.

The problem with the perception that volunteering for military service is no longer a natural path of community service may come from the false perception that the military exists solely to fight wars.  And while that is job one for any military unit, the ways that our military has been used especially in times of crisis to perform community service within the borders of this country has left a long history of achievement as its legacy.

Any young person that wants to join an organization dedicated to the single minded pursuit of being of service to others cannot find a better place to do that than the various branches of the military.  Because the military is generally well funded, well trained, housed full time in preparation for crisis and kept at a high state of train gin and readiness, they can be called into help out when the community finds itself in need.

Each year as hurricane season hits us, you see the military respond heroically.  Nowhere was that more evident than the evacuations from New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina that just could not have been possible without the tireless work of the military.  But their efforts to keep America safe from the inside as well as the outside doesn’t stop when the hurricanes slow down.  Whether it’s a tornado in the Midwest, fires in the west, volcanoes in the northeast or any other disaster that might hit our population, the military always see to be the “first responders” to such crisis.

This high calling of our military is even more evident in the reason for being of our various National Guard units.  While it’s true that in the last few years, they have been needed with that difficult conflict we are facing in the Middle East, historically this has been a military force with the two pronged mission of protecting the population at the local level and helping out when the community has a need.

It’s good to step back from our current view of the military because it can become distorted because of the emotions we all associate with the conflicts our country has been faced with in the last few decades.  But getting a historic view and taking into account the heroic work all branches of our military have done to perform important community service at the local level, we can conclude that there is no better place for a young person to seek a way to follow that commission given by President Kennedy long ago to ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.

Have you noticed how many of the really big businesses in every community always seem to also put a lot of effort into community service projects?  If you look closely at the promotional material these companies put out, you would accept that the reason a business might decide to dedicated a few thousand or hundred thousands of dollars from their vast corporate coffers to help out the community because they “just want to give back to the great community we all live in.”

That sound pretty good to be sure.  But it helps to dig a little deeper.  We all know that the purpose of any business is single minded and that is to make money.  They have an obligation to their stockholders or their owners to make as much of a profit as they can to return to those investors a good reward for the initial investment they put into the business.

This is not evil or imply that a business is somehow selfish.  This is just the reason for being for a business and as long as they do business in a socially responsible way such as maintaining a safe working environment and paying a fair wage, we encourage business to follow their calling to make lots of money because when they do that, everybody wins.

So why do big businesses set aside a percentage of their funding to do community service projects?  It’s a good question because perhaps you are a businessperson trying to decide if getting involved in community service is a good business decision.  Well it turns out it makes very smart business to do something so “un-businesslike” as to do community service projects for the city in which you are based.  Some of those reasons include…

.    It’s free advertising.  When a company jumps into a community service project, it is rarely done anonymously.  A service project in the community is a great way to create lots of “feel good” advertising.  This gets the company name out into the community, which builds what is called “good will”.  Good will is actually an entry in the corporate ledger books as an asset that has monetary value to any company.

.    It builds corporate morale.  Employees like to work for companies that are good citizens of the community.  Often times the company will sponsor a day where employees can go work on a community service project with a workday and get paid for it.  This gives the employee a nice break and builds good feelings both in the community and in the employees, which improves productivity.  Improved productivity improves profits.

.    It builds trust.  People will only do business with someone they like and trust.  And people will go out of their way not to do business with someone they don’t like or trust.  So trust between a company and the customer base is essential for strong sales and continuing to be a profitable business.

.    It’s deductible.  Just like individuals can write off money or goods we give to charities, companies can classify expenses used for community service in a way that benefits them at tax time.  Sometimes companies need all the deductions they can get and charitable ones are not only good dedications but good use of funds to improve the corporate image.

.    It’s a hedge against bad news.  If a big company in your town has ever had to do layoffs, you know the bad press that can cause for that company.  If the relationship of trust between the company and the population, particularly the pool of workers is damaged, building a workforce in good times becomes more difficult.  By building good will in good times, that can offset bad news such as layoffs and actually turn a bad spell for the company into a source of pity and support from the community rather than a source of distrust.

This is not to say that companies don’t have their “hearts” in the right place when they do community service.  But the benefits of pitching in to help the community in which they live are not only good citizenship, its good business.