Local Government And Community Service

Throughout my high school career, I have continuously adhered to the qualities of participation, engagement and leadership through being a good citizen, and have not only begun to impact my local community, but also communities abroad in my state. Active involvement in The Boy Scouts of America has helped develop these qualities I hold and more. My volunteering in county-hosted Christmas events, multiple eagle projects, Brown Bag Ministry, street cleanup, student tutoring, technology assistance, and others has combined to over 160 total service hours in just the span of four high school years. Active citizenship continues to show me different ways of life in my own community and is illuminating. What it also creates is initiative. Through participation with my local fire department, I have been able to identify a need of my community and start to address it. I have volunteered my time for the fire department, and together with the Assistant Fire Chief, we are starting to create a new department website and digital

Some of the activities I was involved in include: Jump Rope for Heart, concession stands for sports, and tutoring for middle school students. My favorite volunteer experience was Little Hoopers. Little Hoopers is a basketball program at my school that teaches children from kindergarten to third grade about basic basketball skills. It took place during basketball season on Saturday mornings. My job was to correct any skills the kids were doing incorrectly, like passing the ball or shooting it. I also had to be sure the kids didn’t misbehave and give them advice if they ever discouraged themselves. I truly enjoyed seeing the children’s faces as they made a basket or accomplished a skill they’ve been trying incredibly hard to achieve. Their smiling faces put a smile on my face.

In tenth grade, my English teacher posed the class with a question: what are you going to do for your community? She emphasized the importance of making a positive impact, even if it meant simply smiling as you hold the door open for someone. She prompted us to go out of our comfort zone and do something for our community. While I had been volunteering at Church and at school, I had never really taken a step out of my comfort zone. Instead of just helping out in, say, a soup kitchen, I decided that it was time

I volunteered in the community mostly through our soccer teams. From Freshmen year to Senior year I have helped out with our Modified soccer teams. I helped coach with Travis Antilla, Adam Soke, and Dillon Nugent. The players all respected me because I was an older player and on the varsity team. I feel I really assisted in spreading the soccer culture to players and teaching them more about the game. I was doing little things to push them such as, always running, cleaning up after practice, and practicing even more afterwards. The importance of this was that, the kids who saw me doing the “harder work” realized that they could do it as well. Andrew Belcher, one

Community impacts our daily lives. It brings us together and it provides the support we need through tough situations. Every day we engage with our community whether it is with a person from the community or with service to help the community flourish. It is important to better ourselves as a community member or a neighbor because a community needs strong members to flourish. To become a strong community member, one must practice all types of altruism, give more than what is required, and work together with members of the community.

I believe community involvement is essential in order to cultivate skills, increase awareness and educate people to have a fruitful venture in mind, body and spirit. The cultural diversity, partnerships with public, private and non-profit organizations have been instrumental to our success in this region. Despite the different ideologies and competing viewpoints, I hope to become an agent of

The greatest component to a successful small town is citizens working together. As a result of our cohesive citizens, our town displays a stellar community within itself. A small town lives and dies by citizenship, the people who work hard, who donate their time to local works, or who hold the door for elders. Growing up, I have become more grateful towards the environment I have been raised in. Fortunately, I feel as though the small-town citizenship has rubbed off on me. Like a pig rolling in the county fair sawdust, I am grateful for the ability to learn the acts of being a good citizen.

It is at the community level in everyday activities that citizens can experience the most measurable and impactful degree of civic engagement.

The organization that I have volunteered for is YMCA. Volunteering at the YMCA taught me how and why civic engagement is so important. Civic engagement is when citizens participate in helping their community to be better and make improvements for the entire community. It gives the chance to show the how we operate when we incorporate our differences and work together toward the community’s common goal. Making our communities more powerfully built through civic engagement increases how many active participations in the community we have. We have to teach future generations about how important civic engagement is. As a community we need to inform them of the benefits of participating in more civic engagement. There are so many ways that citizens

Encouraging students to engage in meaningful, sustained community service and get involved in causes that speak to

Since the 1990s, service-learning and volunteerism have become pervasive throughout higher education. Many campuses now have a center for civic engagement and have hired service-learning coordinators. Large organizations and initiatives have dedicated themselves to promoting and enhancing engagement research and practices. We even have engaged campus awards and designations at the national and state level. Civic engagement is a professional field of study and practice and it is our best hope for bringing in a discussion about sense of community.

Serving my community and giving back to others has always been a huge part of my life. From a young age, my parents instilled in me a love of helping those around me and a want to make my community a better place. One of the biggest areas of community service I have been a part of is at my local church and through my high school’s mini cheer camp.

We assisted the parishioners of the church where we were being housed by helping them complete some of their own projects, including using heavy duty cleaning supplies to remove the mold in the kitchen, replacing the ceiling tiles and replacing the baseboards that had been removed for painting. At Memphis Union Mission we sorted donations of both toiletries and clothing that were to be given out to the homeless in the area. We separated items such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, shampoo and conditioner so they could be packaged up and disseminated to those in need. Once the sorting process was completed, we went downstairs to help the pastor serve lunch in their soup kitchen. When we were volunteering at the Refugee Empowerment center, we helped the children of immigrants complete their homework, many of whom were not fluent in the English language. Once their homework had been finished, we taught them a popular game called ninja. At Girls Incorporated we first helped the students to finish their homework and then played some volleyball and kickball with them, a gesture that was well

I have been involved in numerous activites throughout my life. From ballet, to gymnastics, to being in yearbook and now being in student council and an athletic trainer, the activities have ranged. Out of all of these activites my favorite ones have not been the ones where I stand in front of large crowds to display my talent but rather it has been the ones where most do not even know I was part of making that happen. It is the ones where I have put in countless hours of hard work to make someone else feel appreciated.

Through this class, I understand the general gist of what controls the community in terms of power, organizational strength, and political influences. I have learned about what factors into certain decisions that community members make and what the recent outlook of community participation is. Even though I learned that community participation and involvement in organizations has declined over the past years, it is hopeful to find ways to combat this social apathy that is happening in America today. I enjoyed learning about strategies to help groups of people interact and create an active and responsive community power. The Greene and Haines text was well-organized, strategic, direct, and practical to the subject matter.