Community Service Assignment #2

Community Service in contemporary Jamaican society

Role of UTech/Community Colleges

Chapter 2

Personally, I don’t think volunteerism is on the decline in Jamaica. As the author mentioned

somewhere in Chapter 2, people are still kind to their neighbors and still carry out social activities

for the intrinsic good of it. The social community service spirit is not dead but probably not as

advertised as it used to be and as far as I can remember, volunteerism is about people working for a

general cause while not being mindful of neither the material nor financial gain as a reward for the

deed. Rewards may also come in the form of publicity especially in the corporate world. To weigh

the level of volunteerism that is taking place throughout the country is not an easy task if it were to

be evaluated and put on paper.

The so call decline in volunteerism may seem so because more people are now aware of its benefits

to society and may be doing research into the area. While doing research in the field, one may be

compelled to study the level of existence that the field is presenting. Before this wave of research,

we used to just carry out these activities without one being concerned about how much of it is being

carried out. Volunteerism is not an activity that should attract much of any publicity at all because it

should be done with the greater altruistic cause and nothing else.

Volunteerism I would say is on the rise in Jamaica as more schools are making it apart part of their

syllabuses and more youths are seeing how volunteerism can make their surroundings a better

place to work and live and this is evident through the establishment of many youth groups that

carry out many activities of which their members aren’t paid for. Examples of these types of groups

are church youth groups and community youth clubs. What I may say that I think is attributing to

the perception of the decline in volunteerism is the decline of commercial exposure the

volunteerism efforts are getting through the decline in cooperate entities carrying out

‘volunteering’ activities possibly as a result of the bad economic climate that we are all faced with.

Chapter 3

Volunteerism is the execution of someone’s deontological moral obligation to society expressed

through activities of various kinds.

The problem of volunteerism can be solved through political maneuvers and legislative bills. If

more corporations would advertise the benefits of volunteerism rather than advertising acts of

volunteerism, that would influence the inner moral, categorical imperative, self realization within

people of what the a simple act to a stranger may do for the wider community or wider society. In

this existing deficit the world is going through, the government themselves are promoting self

actualization, entrepreneurship and small/medium enterprises to combat the economic downfall

that we are experiencing, it is not hard for one to think and do acts for themselves. Volunteerism is

not something that an advertisement of another person can instill in someone else, but what those

two can do is to show an individual what the importance of it is.

Apart from activating self realization of the importance of volunteerism, the government could

speed up the process of including community service oriented courses into tertiary, secondary and

primary school’s curriculum. When these subjects are compulsory, such as Math and English,

students will definitely be exposed to the importance of volunteerism and with the aid of

passionate teachers, in no time they will become ambassadors for volunteerism for their peers and

we would see once again the once thought of unattainable Jamaica that cares for each other

especially for the elders.

The agency of which I decided to offer my voluntary services to is the Hellshire Heights Youth Club.

This club serves as a organization that maintains the interaction and communication among youths

in the community while developing them for the real world. The club gives the youth a safe place to

recreate and learn amongst their peers in the comfort of their homes. The objective of this

assignment was to evolve the newly one month reinstated youth club into an organization that is a

staple for youth intervention in the community. The problem statement states that the community

is on a moral decline and urgently needed the intervention of someone or something to reenergize

the spirit of the community through the reclassification of the minds of the youths. The youths are

the future and which means that they are the backbone of the community that is ever growing and

their unacceptable intolerable behaviour needed to be curved urgently. My objective was to counsel

the youths on a regular basis, both formally and informally, use the vast youthful manpower that is

available to physically and mentally rebuild the community through activities such as beautification

of common areas throughout the community. It is the general consensus that the youths have lost

touch with their moral obligations to themselves, others and society at large. My objective is to

introduce some social intervention to curb this problem. I’m also asked to work along with the

Kiwanis club of Hellshire to carry out more voluntary activities to their existing framework that

already has schedules activities to do that.

To accomplish these objectives, I will be initiating a number of activities that range from clean up

exercises, beautification projects, erection of a library at the community centre and some training

sessions to expose the behaviour that is causing a problem and seek to address it there.