Voluntary Service: The Definition Of Community Service

COMMUNITY SERVICE
“Voluntary work intended to help people in a particular area.” That was the textbook definition of “community service.” But notice how it says “voluntary?”, that means doing something on your own free will if I remember correctly. Across America, it’s been a mandatory requirement of young high school and college students to perform a certain amount of community service hours to graduate for quite some time. Some even believe all 18-year olds should perform a whole entire year of community service before they can even go to work to make a living or enter college/university. But this idea is not only a flawed one but a detrimental one as well.
When you think of community service what comes to mind? The posters of people holding hands

The reason it’s so special is that the people helping the community are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. Not because they need to or because someone told them to, not because they’re getting paid, but because they want to. Now pretend the people helping the community are there because they were forced to help. It’s not as special, is it? The people are so grateful because they know everyone there who is helping them genuinely cares and are going out of their way to help them. That makes them feel important, it makes them feel like they matter. Community service or any volunteering for that matter, has a long-standing tradition of helping those in need, or helping anyone or anyplace for that matter because you want because you want to, and in turn making people or the community feel better. The very textbook definition of community service is “Voluntary work intended to help people in a particular area.” But notice how it