Citizenship through Community Service

One important way we can educate people of all ages is to promote community service.

Right now, what is the stigma attached to community service? What do you think of it? Many of you will associate it with punishment, of handouts.

The proper actions of a citizen, in the true sense, is giving back to the community they are a part of. One of the reasons I'm a proponent of Open-Source Software (use OSS almost exclusively) is exactly this reason. I spent many years as a computer programmer, and most of the code I wrote was repeated and reused in other projects in some form. In computer terms, that's very easy to do. It also promotes rapid growth.

In the real world we do this by sharing our knowledge with those around us. We can share just a little bit of knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm with those people around us and it becomes infectious. Just like a smile grows and grows, knowledge and enthusiasm grow as well.

As my children were growing through their early years I realized that I needed to change my way of thinking. I had been noticing actions of other parents treatment of their kids, and realized that the most successful parenting seemed to grow from a willingness to let the children be better than their parents.

Read that again, and think hard about it. Now think not just about parents and children, but those people around us. Community service is not just donating time to the local soup-kitchen or cleaning up the trash along the side of the road, it is helping and encouraging people around you to grow bigger and better than you, or at least trying.

That's a true citizen.