Essay by Anthea Taeuber, Joel Barlow High School, Grade 10

[Note: This is not the article where you should vote for this contestant. This is essayist No. 2, so in the voting article, which is here, just post a comment that says ‘2' to vote for this student. Voting is limited to one person per finalist per day, and closes at 8 p.m. on May 13. The finalist essay follows.] 

Find a dictionary, if you can, or Google it on the Internet or your phone; Look up the definition of the words: Community Service.

 By definition, Community Service happens to be a noun: Voluntary work intended to help people in a particular area, or unpaid work, intended to be of social use, that an offender is required to do instead of going to prison. Who ever decided that community service would be a form of punishment? Why isn’t it naturally viewed positively? To me community service screams privilege much more than punishment.

Community service may be a noun, but I think of it as a verb. Communities need servicing, like machines need servicing, like gardens need watering. ‘To service’, means to care for, or more specifically, to care for something that cannot take care of itself.

On April 27th 2013, Redding celebrated the 7th annual Rid Litter Day, in honor of Earth Day. I have been fortunate enough to have been a founding member of Redding’s Earth Day Committee. I was 9 years old at the time. I am now 16 and proud to say that I have been caring for my community loyally each year. My love for the environment has been within me since I was old enough to write about it. The rivers, fields, trees, animals - they can’t speak up when they need help. In our world, they often become damaged until someone notices. As the committee’s student representative, my job is to engage the students who in turn motivate their parents to participate. Thankfully the number of people volunteering to scour the town to pick up trash has increased each year. And it pulls the town together.

Community volunteering to me, means giving the earth a voice, and for others it can mean different things. To some, it may be raising awareness for the homeless in their communities, to some is may be working at a soup kitchen, but to all, it should mean more than just “volunteering”. It’s about joining with others so that you begin to have a community taking care of the world that gives it life and sustains it.

Community service is not about logging hours proving that you are active or have paid your debt to society. It is about forming connections, lending yourself to something that is bigger than you, stepping outside of your comfort zone to understand the connection between self interest and common interest.

When that six year old girl brimming with energy and excitement races across the town green just ahead of her bouncing pony tail to help paint an Earth Day mural, you feel yourself smiling from the inside out, not only knowing that she’s happy in this moment, but also that she may someday inspire another six year old to do the same. I consider volunteering a true privilege, because experiencing people coming together is more powerful than we think. I think everyone should sentence themselves to community service.