Today, volunteering has been condensed into a single word--no, 2 words--TIME and MONEY. At school, the forty-hour requirement forces many of the student body to actively join lucrative ventures such as the cancer walk and the hospital. Such virtuous venues.
One may generally assume that a cancer walk will actively raise "awareness" and "money" for research on cancer. Volunteers begin by producing a booth with a few games "teaching" others generally well-known facts, such as "Smoking kills. Don't smoke." They spend the rest of the day walking around in circles around a track. Net gain: 24 full hours of service! With food provided!
I do not understand how walking around in circles contributes to awareness. True, money was raised, not by the walking, but by the volunteers themselves. One MUST raise $100 in order to participate in the event. Does this not exclude many members who would have volunteered (and perhaps have brought the families, garnering more live interest)? The only people in attendance were the cancer survivors, who freed doves. The true cancer patients were not represented in any way. Life is for the living. The event celebrated the dead and the victorious. Not the suffering. None of the attendants actually were subjected to the true conditions of the extreme pain cancer patients experience on a daily basis. What about the balding, the radiation treatments, the vomiting, the inability to consume liquids, the pain, the scars? Nothing is reflected. There are no short term benefits to be seen. Where is the heart? Where is the meaning?
Volunteering at the hospital requires also an innate ability to extrapolate. Most high-school age volunteers are only allowed to perform clerical tasks, such as manning the gift shop or filing books in an empty, disused, fairly extinct library. Feeding patients requires training and...MONTHS on a waiting list. Net gain: SAT study time!! It is impossible to call sitting at an empty table satisfying or meaningful. No contact with the patients. Personal time.
Perhaps it is easier to look farther and participate in better tasks. But it appears that work has begun to lose its meaning, little by little. Where will volunteering lead next?
I thought in Cancer walks (and other similarly themed walks) Cancer survivors and family members alike would support research by raising money and such. Cancer patients are proudly represented by family and friends. I don't really see why this could be a bad thing. I mean, the money is still being raised, isn't it?
True. My point is the total lack of interaction between people and what they're actually volunteering for. I don't feel that sense of connection. Of course money is very useful. But I don't think that the awareness part is being approached. The educational aspect is lacking.
Well, I don't participate in Relay for Life for the community service aspect of it. That's what science olympiad and cool science and other such activities are for.
~C
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I did the AIDS Ride several years ago, and I have to say that it was quite satisfying. It was a hell of a lot of work to raise the money, it was a hellishly difficult week, and at the end, I felt quite a bit of satisfaction. I met a lot of great people (granted, I wouldn't have bonded with people at a one day walk). And while I know the fundraising corporation who sponsored the event took the lion's share of the money, I worked for one of the beneficiaries, and I know that the proceeds of the Ride were the largest percentage of the organization's funding. Raising the money really does make a difference. It's especially satisfying if especially if you can track it to the actual organization that will be using the funds.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/ediblewoman
I'm very sorry that your experience with community service requirements for school proved to be unpleasant. To be in one of the honors societies at my school a 30 hour minimum was given to us. To gain those 30 hours, I ended up participating in several activities I would have never considered otherwise. I would encourage you to try more creative service outlets in the future, perhaps.
Well written piece, by the by
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/hugogirl46
If you don't like the volunteer opprotunities your school offers, why not do some research into others and suggest that you might do them instead? Or that the school could perhaps even add those additional ones into the curriculum.
From what I understand, you want to work directly with the people you're trying to help... in which case, I'd recommend looking into crisis lines/hotlines in your area, street-outreach programs, needle exchange programs, soup kitchens, food banks, and homeless shelters. In many cases there are volunteer opprotunities for teens from the age of 15 or 16, and sometimes younger, sometimes even children. However a lot of those programs do require some training time. But look into it, it can be a LOT more fulfilling than walking around a track, and you get to make actual connections with the people you're trying to help, you get to understand their issues better, you become more empathic towards those less fortunate than you, you get to learn all sorts of important things (from ethics to practical life skills), etc.
I've done a lot of research into this sort of thing and a lot of volunteering, so feel free to ask if you have any questions on it, and good luck with finding something you're more passionate about.
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Please see my recent blog post, "Genocide and Student Activism": http://www.progressiveu.org/041447-genocide-and-student-activism
Thanks for the suggestions!! I'll do my best!