Creative Community Service

I remember going to a leadership conference in 10th grade and having a panel discuss young people and altruism. I don't remember exactly what the people on the panel said but I do remember the discussion that our table had afterwards. We had a debate about whether or not high schools should make community service mandatory. While some argued that community service should come out of the goodness of one's heart and it would not be good to have high school students in the community who don't want to be there, I prudently was in favor of the idea.

Naturally, we all want people to do community service and other altrustic things simply to help people. But I do think some people need a little push, an incentive to repriortize. A lot of people say they want to help others, but they don't spend time or as much time as they want doing it; I know from personal experience. I don't think that schools should force students to do a ton of hours, but just a few hours at least to remind them to give back somewhere. From what I've noticed, once most students actually start their community service work (whether they were originally exicted to do it or not), they end up really enjoying it and a lot of people continue to do it outside of their assignment. And above all else, work for others is being accomplished. Even if people did a bare minimum of what was requested of them, some time is better than none.

I know this idea wouldn't be very popular because people already say that high school students are overworked, but I am glad that at least I went to a church where we had to do 25 hours of community service per year. And I remember catching "the bug" and spending hundreds of hours at different projects. Pretty much the only thing about college that I regret was not being able to do more service projects, but I do remember the ones that I did were very memorable and rewarding. So I guess that's why when I went to law school, I was really excited to participate in the school's community service day and Pro Bono Honors Pledge Program, where I have made a committment to do at least 75 hours over three years. It might not sound like a lot, but I think it would be very easy to put that aside, especially in law school. The pledge is completely voluntary and you don't get anything besides the sheer satisfaction of helping people, but I think its a good system to keep yourself accountable for what you actually want to do.

Perhaps a pledge program would be better than mandatory hours, but until that is even in place at a larger level, I think a great way to motivate people to give is making it fun. I've actually seen some really great ideas lately such as a toy drive at a elementary school in Santa Clarita that had kids give food and they could put it in the UCLA bucket or USC bucket and every so many cans would be a "touchdown." Speaking of the rivalry, appparently UCLA had a clothing drive where people could trade in their red clothing for a UCLA shirt and all of the red clothing would go to a shelter. At law school, my fraternity collected cans of food in exchange for "immunity" for being called on in class. At the main campus, they also collected cans but you could get part of your library fees (you know for all those overdue books) knocked down for every can you brought in. And in our building, there is a raffle for fun things around DC and the money for the raffle tickets goes towards the major AIDS clinic in DC.

I'm not trying to make community service all Machiavellian and say that you should use whatever means to get people to go out into their communities and serve, but I do applaud creative efforts to get people to do it. And while some people might raise a susicious eyebrow and say that you shouldn't give people rewards for something that they should be doing anyway, I say that its always a little selfish. You know that Friends episode where Joey challenges Phoebe to do a charitable act where she doesn't benefit from feeling good doing it, it's that. You should feel good, and there's nothing wrong with that.