Participating in various activities at the BAPS Swaminarayan Temple has been extremely satisfying for me. I assist people with everyday activities, such as cleaning and serving food. In addition, I provide some of the youths with tutoring or Mini- SAT classes. This is of great personal satisfaction for me because, when helping people, I feel that society needs me and, when tutoring them, I learn a lot myself. I am also planning to organize a medical camp. This can be a rewarding experience because the camp will be of great use for me and society as well.
Taking an active part in community life is essential for every person. This allows helping people and becoming a better member of society. Moreover, helping the community is my duty, especially taking into account that I have opportunities for this. I can share my knowledge with other people and, in this way, I can change people’s lives and they, in their turn, can change mine.
It is a tremendous feeling when, for instance, I have a problem with my mail delivery and I can speak to someone who I know and who works for the United Postal Service. I also wish to be a person who other people can count on. I think that my commitment to the temple is essential to promoting a pleasant experience for all the temple goers. I will serve as a role model for other people and they, following my example, will also get committed to the temple. This will help me to contribute to society even more.
Community services are defined as the services which are performed for the benefit of the society on volunteering basis. Community services are spread among students of high schools and colleges as their desire to be useful is rather high. Volunteering becomes a very important factor for many organizations.
People are more likely accepted at different positions and at colleges if they were involved in volunteering community services. Therefore, the ideas to make the service obligatory arise more frequently. Gov. Gray Davis proposes that community service should be an obligatory for graduation and offers several specific programs which should be applied at high schools and colleges (“Keep Davis’s Service Requirement Away from UC Students” n.p.).
However, many people disagree with the proposition. Therefore, there are to main points of view regarding volunteering community services. Each side of the discussion offers strong arguments which should be considered before making community volunteering activities obligatory.
The advantages of volunteering during college years are that people are more likely to participate in different community activities in the future (Eggers n.p.). Students will understand that community makes much for them and they are to pay the same price. Moreover, the value of community services is that people become devoted to the society they live in.
Still, these arguments are not that convincing for making a community service mandatory all students. It is important to distinguish between really necessary services and those which are valued as volunteering ones. Some students may experience difficulties in finding free time for volunteering activities for the benefit of the society (Eggers n.p.).
Additionally, who would like to receive assistance from those who are made to assist? Volunteering is valued due to free desire to assist others. Having become a compulsory work, community service would lose its value and significance (Tugend). Many companies value volunteering assistance not because of the work done, but because of the desire to help the community, the desire to be useful if one has an opportunity to do it.
Kintisch is sure that schools should encourage students to volunteer, they should deliver this message for students, however parents are to play more vital role is student’s decisions. It is important to help students understand what volunteering means for them and what they may take out of it, but to make students perform community services is a bad idea.
Therefore, it may be concluded that community services are really important for the whole society. Still, they are valued until they are volunteering. Who would appreciate a service made under stress? Students should personally decide for themselves whether they need volunteering experience of they want to get payment for the work they do.
The advantages of the community services cannot be questioned, still, making such service mandatory for graduation many students would not have that great desire to assist.
Many opinions are expressed in the relation to making community services obligator, still, the only rationale decision is to leave everything as it is. School administration should encourage students for performing community services while parents should play more important role in this process.
It is the responsibility of parents to explain the main idea of community services for their adolescents and help those perform community work. As for me, I consider community work as a good opportunity to get the main idea of some particular services, still, I would not have the same great desire to participate in social life is the services would become obligatory for graduation.
Works Cited
Eggers, Dave. “Serve or Fail.” New York Times. 13 June 2004. Web.
“Keep Davis’s Service Requirement Away from UC Students.” The Daily Californian. 16 November 1999. Web.
Kintisch, Eli. “Mandatory Service Learning is Truly Oxymoronic.” Yale Herald Online. 1998. Web.
Tugend, Alina. “The Benefits of Volunteerism, If the Service is Real.” New York Times. 30 July 2010. Web.