Communication and Service Learning: Group 1: Community Service is a necessity, even for YOU!

The members in our group are Jenna Dobin, Brianne Dolan, YoonKyung Cho, Alexander Moeller, Jessica Henkel, and Jane Kim and we all agree that community service is important for countless reasons. Community service makes the world a better place; it can make a difference to the lives of people, animals, organizations, and the environment. Community Service has a positive impact not only on the community but also on the volunteers contributing their efforts. Taking part in community service gives volunteers psychological, social and cognitive benefits. Through volunteering for community service people create friendships, learn new skills and often even advance their careers. Its also been studied that volunteering also helps peoples mental and physical health.

Most people don’t realize that community service is also important to the volunteers. Volunteering for community service is very beneficial; it helps people make new friends, expand their network and boost social skills. To commit to a shared activity together, this strengthens friendships and causes new relationships to form. It forces volunteers to meet new people, especially when they’re working in a new area. This enforces volunteers to build their networks, and expose you to people of similar interests. Volunteers need to constantly be around other people and work with others to complete a goal this results in developing their social skills and giving them a great opportunity of learning how to work in a group.

Volunteering increases self-confidence by providing a healthy boost to their self-esteem and life satisfaction. Volunteering makes people feel better about themselves causing them have a more positive view on life and their own future goals. This in end combats depression in people who volunteer, considering key risk factors for depression are social isolation and not feeling good about oneself. Another important impact volunteering has on a person is that it helps people stay physically healthy. Studies have found that those who volunteer have a lower mortality rate than those who do not.

Volunteering can introduce people to different experiences that could turn into new career interest. Through these experiences people can meet necessary people in the new field that they are pursing. Even when people are not planning on changing careers, volunteering teaches people new knowledge or offers opportunities to learn new skills used in the workplace. Volunteering people learn teamwork, communication, problem solving, project planning, task management, and organization.

The more obvious benefits community service provides is the great impact it has on the community. Some people believe that it is the unpaid volunteers that are sometimes the glue that holds a community together. There are many different community service activities that make a huge difference. Listed below are simple and easy things we can do, to contribute to our community.

· Like our group has done, people can donate books, novels, and other reading materials to their local parish. People could also donate books to schools, hospitals, libraries or shelters.

· Donate old clothes or household goods. You can give to your local Goodwill

· Donate some non-perishables foods to your local food bank.

· Bring used toys and stuffed animals to a children’s hospital.

· Answer a letter to Santa from a needy child.

· Send a care package to deployed troops, veterans, or wounded soldiers. Write a thank-you letter and include some food (no homemade or canned food allowed). This can be done through: Operation Gratitude

To learn what to donate and who to send it to: Give2TheTroops

· Donate blood. You can make an by clicking on: appointment with the Red Cross,

or look for a community blood drive near you.

· Teach computer skills to the elderly.

· Become a volunteer tutor.

Further information can be found at: http://www.helpguide.org/articles/work-career/volunteering-and-its-surprising-benefits.htm

From just these few examples we have a slight look into how important community service is to society and how the public depends on it for many different scenarios. Community service is crucial for the environment on a moral standpoint. There are many issues that cannot be fixed on their own or through government help and people who are capable need to help. In some cases community service is essential for peoples lives or the existence of an organization. When things have this big of an impact on the public its not hard to argue why community service is so important.

#DoYourPart #ProjectCommunity #OneselfOneCommunity

Section: 0002