You know what is it.............Community service!

Explaining My Community Service…In Narrative Form

Throughout the month on November, I took the initiative to volunteer at Habitat for Humanity, also known as, Restore.  With locations all over the country, Habitat for Humanity is an organization that prides itself on helping low income families and the homeless by having a place where they can purchase cheap household items and materials.  With the money that Restore gets, they invest it into building homes for people that cannot afford housing.  Habitat for Humanity builds these homes throughout the U.S to support the people who need these homes.  With some of my friends, I was mostly participating in checking if donated things worked, along with loading and unloading trucks full of donated items.  I found myself going through every item you could imagine ranging from couches, televisions, ceiling fans, Christmas lights, sound systems, computers, and items that go with computers as well.  For five hours of the day this is what I would do.  As I did this, I also participated in helping the people who volunteer every day to help manage the store along with the people who visited the store.   Anything they needed help with, I practically did.  This would range from climbing to the top of the loading room to organize ski gear, to lifting desks, filing cabinets, and even washers or dryers. While doing this as well, I also had the job of pricing the items that were donated in the local area and deciding which items went to St. Vincent De Paul, a charity that dedicates itself to helping the homeless and also a partner of Restore. With the responsibility of deciding which items to send to such charity, I started to slowly understand the purpose of civil duty. With every item that was placed inside the dumpster sized storage unit, I knew someone was going to benefit from one the thousands of items inside the storage unit.

Me and Parker getting ready for the day, With a little help from McDonald's and Taco Bell

Summative Analysis on Civic Duty

 Civic duty is the responsibilities citizens carry in any country. However, in the U.S, Civic duty is one of the most important components in making what we as a country stand for, Democracy. Civic duties are not limited in just one category. They can fall into, economic, environmental, civil, political, and also quality of life issues (learntogive.org) .In all of these categories, the people of America can help achieve something not one person can do alone, which is making the country and even the world a better place.

 To begin, Civic duty can come from a political stand point such as running for senator and governor. The people that run for any political position is doing it for the goal of helping out their country by giving not only their voice, but the people’s voices who vote for them, as well. Voting is also a civic duty that keeps our stand for Democracy alive as well (civicfest.org) With the power to vote for any person you wish to represent the state you’re living, including voting for someone to represents the nation as a whole; the people should take this as an act of civic duty. Although many do not vote, the majority as a nation should take on their right to vote for men or women, to help their families and the nation with the everyday problems that our faced and to help the progress on the nation grow.  Not only does civic duty drop into political, there are also many Civic duties that are economically involved.

Taxes are another way in which Civic duty comes into play. The U.S taxes citizens in order to efficiently support social services that the country offers such as, social security, health care, and national defense. The most common taxes we pay are sales taxes and income taxes (sctax.com). With taxes from a state or federal level, it is our responsibility as citizens to pay these taxes so the nation as a whole can benefit from these social services. Without citizens paying taxes, there is no way that the U.S could afford to keep Social security or Medicare. We as citizens must be responsible in keeping our services alive by paying our taxes.

Civic duties can also fall into a civil category also. Here, we can start to see many of the civic duties that citizens must carry out in order to keep this country together. First, it is the job of every male citizen to register for the selective services at the age of eighteen (civicfest.org). It is the responsible of the men who are citizens in this country, to when they are needed, to protect this nation and fight for its beliefs on democracy and freedom. Also, jury duty is another civic duty that must be done from time to time as a citizen of this nation. Jury duty is important in maintaining justice in our country as well as giving the rights of citizens on trial, which is to be judged by their peers (sixth amendment of U.S constitution) as well as give a spoken opinion of the people while in the process of jury duty. Lastly, helping your community by volunteering is another civic duty that can be civil.  Volunteering can be things such as, helping the homeless by participating in food banks, or help by giving them everyday worldly items, cleaning the local community of waste, or working in soup kitchen (elcivics.com). This is not required to do like some civic duties are, however, it is an important civic duty that helps our communities in being more efficient, active, and understanding what must be done in order to call one’s town a community.

In conclusion, civic duties are one of the most important ingredients that make up what we stand for, democracy. Without civic duties, this nation would never be mentioned as one of the most prestige countries in the world. Also, it is important that the citizens of tomorrow participate in civic duties and maybe strive for more than what is expected in the citizen of today. Like John D.Rockerfeller Jr. said, “We must instill a sense of duty in our children”; “every right responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty” (academicintegrity.org).

Bibliography

http://www.academicintegrity.org/fundamental_values_project/quotes_on_responsibility.php

www.elcivics.com/civics.html

http://www.civicfest.org/the-draft.html http://www.civicfest.org/voting.html

http://www.sctax.org/dor_help/Why+Do+We+Pay+Taxes.htm

http://learningtogive.org/papers/paper11.html

Parker cant handle the weight.. guess its up to this guy to help out with this HUGE tool cabinet and send it off to St.Vincent! (My Boy Furnis in the back!!!!!!!!!)

deciding how to get this filing cabinet out of the store without hitting anything. As you can see, we must ponder our way out of this one.

Cleaning up a T.V that's off to St.Vincent!

Analysis of My Civic Duty

With me volunteering at an organization that helps the homeless as well as the less fortunate families across the country, I stopped and pondered to why this is important for this country to strive the way it has. Without civic duty, the people in this country care more and more about themselves, and not about the people around them. As I was debating which donated items to place inside the St. Vincent De Paul’s storage unit, I started to realize I wasn’t aiding just some people, but these items can be passed on and on to thousands of less fortunate people. I was amazed to think that the community service I did for ten hours would go to help thousands of people. As I was placing televisions in the unit I also came to realize, organizations like these thrive on people like me. More importantly, they thrive on people like one of their loyal volunteers that goes to Restore every Tuesday and Wednesday, Furnis.  Furnis goes to Restore to do exactly what I did, anything and everything. Whether it was folding boxes, or organizing things in the back, Furnis did it. The big part was he wasn’t even getting paid. Karen, basically my boss lady for ten hours, was probably in her 70’s helping Restore reach its main objective, helping the misfortunate.  She would also debate with me about what to put in the St. Vincent’s storage unit. Karen would see something that could easily go on the floor of the store, but instead would say, “Put it in with the St. Vincent stuff!” She knew, Furnis knew, and finally I started to see, that everyone here wasn’t working for a goal that Restore prized itself on, all of them were working on a goal that this country prizes itself on, helping the others around you. They wanted to help the likes of others in our community; they also wanted to help everyone in the state of Arizona.  The forms of my service not only were going to directly help one, it was also going to help a family in need. The service was not only benefiting people in my community, I benefitted as well. I would have never thought in a million years going to Restore would have the effect on my life the way in which it did. I got to see the people who volunteer everyday and see why they truly do it. The reason they do, is because they want to better society as a whole, and that is exactly what civic duties is all about. I can see the problems people have with civic duty; it takes too much of their time. I believe that any length of time can never match what you learn from civic duty. The people that do civic duties help society and those people can range from me, to Furnis, to Karen, and to thousands of others in our nation. From working in the garage of Restore and figuring out which items to place in a charities storage unit, Restore supports as well, I managed to help society expanding past Arizona state borders. And with this type of work under my belt, which I did for ten hours, I understood the concept of civic duty. Sadly though, I don’t think I truly grasped the purpose of civic duty we just ten hours at one organization. I fear that a lot other kids think this, but in the end don’t do anything about. All the high school kids that need their community services hours get them and then forget the overall purpose of why they need this to graduate.( To them , that is the purpose). The purpose is for you to see the different people in the world, and not just suburban middle class folks with nice Mercedes. The purpose of civic duty is to show you that a nation cannot become the greatest with just perfect government, or fantastic leaders. A nation becomes its greatest when the people of that nation take on the problems arising in that nation. The service I did at Restore showed me this and got me to really think that with just on person helping for ten hours could help thousands, what could happen if thousands of help for ten hours or even more, then how many people in society would be helped by civic duty?

After a long day of sorting, moving, and putting everything back into the loading room, we REST! (the sun is in my eyes and can't see very well...)