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Local Youth Make Volunteering a Way of Life

Youth volunteering is up 12 percent over the last 10 years according to the Higher Education Research Institute. Meanwhile, 73 percent of America’s youth believe they can make a difference in their community, according to a Princeton Research Survey.

Pamella Vincent, sixteen, of Gwinn helps her local community by volunteering with Girl Scouts, with her local church, with student council, and the Gwinn Clubhouse––a community center. A group of Westwood High School students are keeping a stretch of US 41 clean as part of the Michigan Department of Transportation’s Adopt-A-Highway program. Girl Scout Troop 11 of Marquette is decorating the Kid’s Room at the Beacon House, a hospitality house connected to the Marquette General Health System. These kids all make a difference in their local community by volunteering.

Troop 11 spent a recent Saturday afternoon at the Beacon house decorating the children’s room. The work was the follow up to several planning sessions the girls put in before going to work. The scouts put their hands in multiple colors of paint and put handprints on the wall. Others painted a tree on the wall with the handprints around it. More scouts spent time cleaning the toys in the room.

“Volunteering has brought a little more happiness to some children who were put in a bad situation.” Said Julie Kaznowski, a parent/leader with Girl Scout Troop 11. “It’s good to be a part of a community that helps each other.”

Caroline Reynolds, eleven, of Harvey, is part of Troop 11. The Girl Scout troop has dedicated its time to the community in multiple projects.

“We’ve helped a lot of homeless people and we’ve done lots of care packages,” she said. “We did one thing for the troops in Iraq, and some care packages for the people here.”

Another Girl Scout, Christina Lochner, twelve, also of Harvey, is a member of the Troop and is proud of what her troop has done.

“It’s helping a whole lot of people. I think it’s really making a difference,” She said.

Unfortunately, The Public Agenda Counsel says that only 37 percent of American adults believe that today’s children, once grown, will make the world a better place. However, Julie Luehmann, Westwood High School Student Council advisor, thinks differently. The Westwood High School Student Council participates in Adopt-A-Highway in the fall and spring. Luehmann believes that the volunteering that the kids are doing is helping the community by keeping the highway clean.

“It cleans up the highway and makes it look a lot nicer. Usually (during the spring) we pick up maybe 20 bags of garbage and then in the fall it’s not so bad,” she said. “The kids have realized that littering isn’t a good thing.”

Ryan Farley, eighteen, of Ishpeming, gets a positive feeling after dedicating time toward making the local area a better place.

“I choose to volunteer because it makes me feel good about myself after I’m done doing a service project like this,” he said. “Go drive down that stretch of highway, you look out and see it’s clean, and you can look at it and know on the inside that you helped out that area.”

Farley didn’t need any adult influence to begin to volunteer in his youth. He felt that he wanted to dedicate his time to his local community.

“It was more of wanting to,” he said. “Eighth grade was when we started with student council, and that’s where it was a final push that made me want to try it out and get more involved.”

Farley spends a couple of hours a week depending upon his schedule. A number of good volunteering habits were started at an early age for many of the youth interviewed. It varied from starting to volunteer in early elementary school to beginning in middle school.

Luehmann agrees that community service is important for youth to perform.

“One of the things we want our students to get involved in is service to their community and to their school,” she said. “So this is a perfect opportunity for us to broaden their horizons and give service to the community.”

None of the youth interviewed could recall a bad experience they had while volunteering, but most could recall a number of good experiences. An example of this is the random items found along US 41 while the group cleans.

Zach Laiho, sixteen, of Ishpeming, acknowledges that volunteering brings about unique treasures that you can’t find on eBay.

“We’ve found a few chainsaw sculptures. One was a sculpture of an eagle, about four feet tall,” he said. “Our guess is that it fell out of some supply truck, like they have for the Logging Congress, and our guess it was from a contest or something. We still have it at home. Some of the stuff you wouldn’t notice passing by, but a few times we’ve found money and other stuff.”

A recent Independent Sector/Gallup poll indicated that people who volunteer in their youth are three times more likely to volunteer as adults.
Pamella Vincent, sixteen, of Gwinn, dedicates her time to the local library in Gwinn, picking up garbage around the parks, helping start a pop can drive, setting up a party in which your donate can goods to enter the event, and also helps with senior citizen activities at the Gwinn Clubhouse.

“Me and my friends and Girl Scouts and my parents…we see something that the community needs, or should have, or could be better, and it’s a group thing,” she said. “We decide that we should do this and we work together.”

She has even earned numerous awards for her service work, from receiving a number of certificates, to earning the Girl Scout Bronze Award for volunteer work in her local community. While most don’t dedicate as much time to service work as Vincent, a large number of youth still spend a great amount of time with some kind of volunteer work.

For Vincent, volunteering has kept her out of trouble and has made her more aware of what is going on in her local community. By being more aware of others around her, she has been able to evaluate what needs to be done and how they can help. Also, she can spend time with her friends while helping out for a good cause.

Vincent’s mother Theresa hopes the current youth volunteering trend will continue. She feels there will always be a need for people to help.

“Somebody always needs something and there are groups that are looking for people to help volunteer to provide those needs. I’m hoping that the kids catch on and will do those things,” she said. “I’d like to see more of them get involved in some of the school activities that are available to them––student council––and making decisions and choices about what’s happening in schools.”

With the life lessons learned from such service, Vincent plans to take the experience and expand upon it in her adult live.

“I’ll be volunteering in the future, and I have goals set so far of what I want to do in so many years.” She said. “And, I want to reach some goals and then be able to set more goals.”

As with Vincent, other youth plan to continue their volunteer service in the future. While Farley isn’t completely sure what kind of volunteer work he will be doing, he would prefer to be involved.

“I’d love to stay involved with other types of community service through maybe coaching a basketball team or coaching a Pop Warner football team,” he said. “It kind of keeps you on schedule, plus makes you feel involved and accomplished.”

Lochner also has plans to continue to give her time.

“I will volunteer in the future. I like seeing what helping others can do for the community,” she said.

Much of the support that young people receive to do such service work comes from adults who encourage them. These people are the parents, the teachers, and other adults, who are in charge of these groups. These are the people encouraging youth toward community service and showing them that there is not a dollar value to everything they will do in life.

With the emphasis on service in the community, the good that comes from it, and the people that it helps, this is a positive trend. Youth learn numerous life lessons from such work and this teaches them more about what is around them and teaches an individual not to be as self-centered, but instead to focus more on others. As time goes by, volunteering will increase more in local communities because of the good it brings to so many individuals.

Editors Note: This story was written by Joseph Short, 16, Eric Wagner, 14, and Jorden McCallister, 14.