Volunteer Kids

Children are the world’s most valuable resource and making them compassionate humane adults only means making the world a more compassionate place. When kids volunteer  they are not only benefitting the group at the receiving end but the community at large, and more importantly, they are being sensitized to the sufferings and problems around them. Volunteering means offering one’s service out of one’s free will. The benefits of kids  and volunteerism are manifold. Volunteering assists kids with increased self-confidence and self- esteem. It makes them more compassionate and tolerant to the view points of others. Kids Volunteers, often, engage in a lifelong ethic of service and continue delivering service even in adulthood.

The onus of motivating kids to be volunteers rests with the parents. The beginning can be as modest as lending a hand to someone carrying heavy stuff unable to open the door or helping a blind person cross the road or taking care of a sick puppy picked up from roadside. These are some events that happen in our daily lives and exhibiting kindness during such instances instils amongst kids the attitude of helping others early in life. Families can even spend time with each other while engaging in family volunteering activities. They may periodically visit old age home or orphanages, distributing old clothes and other stuff or teaching a particular vocational skill to an orphan child.

 Another level of kids' volunteerism is at the level of the school. Today most schools engage in social service projects lending their services to the community. Performing a play or a puppet show at a hospital, reading out to a sick child, cleaning up a  public garden or park , collecting spare books , clothes or toys are some drives that schools usually conduct as means of giving back to the community. An example can be cited from the Doon School, India which has been engaging in volunteering ever since its inception. The kids of the school have lent support to victims of Tsunami, earthquakes, landslides and floods. The school runs a Panchayat Ghar where the students teach the underprivileged children. Over the years, the school kids have helped villagers in the construction of houses, community centres and school buildings; sanitation systems; energy efficiency systems; self-employment and small scale irrigation systems. Another example is the Roadstar Campaign launched by a NGO in collaboration with the traffic police and Rotary club, Pune to encourage traffic discipline in which more than seventy school kids participated as volunteers.  The National Service Scheme of the Government  of India also aims at encouraging students to get involved in community service thereby fostering national development.

When kids volunteer they realize as James Cash Penny once said that the greater pleasure of life lies in the art of giving and not receiving.The sooner innocent minds realize this pleasure the closer will be the the dream of a  selfless world.