Organizing at the local food bank warehouse.
Picking litter from the streets of Port Townsend.
And coming soon in the summer of 2010, Jefferson County Youth Corps students will be gardening, assisting on a local farm, volunteering for the Northwest Kiwanis Camp, helping out in soup kitchens and cleaning up local beaches and parks. A few of the latter are verbal commitments for now, but when these 17 year-olds see the value of a project and are given an opportunity to hang out with friends, their follow through has stood. And their positivity has been contagious.
How exactly does a service project become fun? I don't know the answer to this one. But I keep telling the Youth Corps students, "come to meetings and we will brainstorm, take care of business and it will be fun. If you come to this project we can lend a needed hand and we can have fun". Maybe it's just a little beginner's enthusiasm, but so far... it has been fun.
The challenge will be maintaining this positivity as the program expands. The students involved in the Youth Corps are all familiar with each other. I want to reach out to anyone and everyone attending high school in East Jefferson County: the atypical volunteers, the typical "achievers", those who aren't involved in athletics or school clubs, guys, girls, freshmen and seniors. How do we keep the fun alive as the student base becomes more diverse? When it is more than friends? This would probably be easier to answer if I had an answer to the first question. How was it fun to begin with?
I guess I believe there is no ceiling for the fun and meaning in life's activities. Especially when the impact is visible. And especially with a few helping hands. Let's see how things roll on...
- Lee Routledge
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment