Caring for others is a powerful and one of the most profound things we get to do in life. I have been volunteering most of my adult life, yet I found it difficult to present my thoughts on why we should invest more time in volunteering and how best to explain how volunteering sets a great example for our kids.
Like most life skills, volunteering is learned at home. Teaching our kids to look beyond their everyday needs is like giving them a map to purposefulness and their journey to happiness.
Most of the information available online is well presented and backed by research. I encourage you to check it out for yourself. Where-ever you look, one thing is evident, volunteering works – both for the recipients and for the giving party.
I hope you will agree, giving and compassion are powerful forces which sets humanity apart from many other living creatures. It’s healing in nature, and to some degree, spiritual.
A few years back I shared a statement in which I will summarize my take on it: “It is our ability to care that makes humanity spiritual”
In recent decades a number of social trends shifted society to a rapidly disconnected society – while bombardment of advertisements, literature and media strongly pointed to self-growth, self-discovery, self-worthiness, etc. I would highly disagree in this respect as human growth can’t happen without human interactions. Growth while distancing ourselves from human experiences is almost not growth at all. This is particularly true when it comes to growth and development of our youth.
With this said, it is of most importance that we expose our youth to the more spiritual side of human kind and teach them care, love, compassion and understanding for others.
Volunteering is a great opportunity to experience growth in its best form:
- Kids feel purposeful, which gives them a great sense of pride and worthiness
- Volunteering creates unique learning opportunities
- Volunteering helps create positive likeminded communities and are great extension to immediate family structure
- By volunteering we become part of the solution, thus inspiring and empowering an individual
- We begin to better understand individual and community needs
- Better understanding and proactive thinking initiates action
- Taking action after gaining better understanding creates better leaders
I could go on and on, but I believe you got the point. Bottom line, technical development will continue to rapidly expand the intellectual aspect of our children’s lives. Our job as parents is to make sure we present our youth with learning opportunities which can be obtained only through giving and working together as one in the same effort to the betterment of human kind.
