Giving Back To Communities

You do not have to be rich or a millionaire to help others living in your community. There are uncountable ways that everyone can give back to the community without spending a lot of money or time. There is always


someone on the other end of the world who needs your help; it does not have to be financial, if you do not have money to give back. A majority of people think that to give back to the community they have to put in a very big effort, but this is a wrong intuition they have. Others do not see the importance of contributing to the community at all because they think its only a way for celebrities to gain publicity. Contributing to the community is important because it helps eliminate such problems as depression, and it can improve how one feels about themeselves significantly.

Contributing to your community can actually be so much fun, especially if you get involved in activities that you like. Just one person can get so many other people volunteering or giving back in one way or the other. Below are some inexpensive ways you can give back to the people you living with you.

The thrift store

You can give back to the community by taking your old clothes, shoes, house furnishings, and kitchen utensils to a thrift store closest to you. I have seen perfectly reusable items like mattresses and furniture at the dumpster, when there are other people willing to buy the same possessions at a lower price. Thrift stores run by the Salvation Army use their earnings to buy food for people living in homeless shelters. You can promote them by buying some of the goods they sell; some items they sell are in really good condition for you to incorporate in your house. Next time just pay them a visit, and you'll see it for yourself.

Hosting a fundraiser for charity

If you have many friends that you spend much time with, this is a good idea to incorporate in your meetings. For example, if you plan to have a high school reunion or a get-together, you could have a fundraiser as one
of the activities to carry out during the meeting. This is a better idea than spending the entire time gossiping about your former classmates or feeling bad about your few achievements in life.

Hosting a fundraiser at the end of a school semester is also a good way to end a semester of hard work. If you are a student, this is a good idea to put in your school suggestion box. You do not have to give actual money, you could give back your old textbooks and stationary that you do not need anymore. If you are graduating, your graduation gown can be very useful to some other student who would otherwise have to miss his or her graduation.

Use your talent

I believe that everyone has a talent. You do not have to be an athlete, or celebrity for your talent to be valid or helpful to the community. If you love cooking you could volunteer in a homeless shelter, or soup kitchen to prepare meals for the hungry people in your community. Yes, we live in America where everyone is supposed to be healthy and not starving, but there are people who live within us that can't afford to buy food. If you love to talk to people, you could volunteer at a guiding and counseling center and give your advice when you can. People love to listen to others who they can relate to. Just visiting the senior citizen facility closest to you, and listening to them talk to you can be very helpful to both parties; they could teach you something you did not know about the old days. Some senior citizens do not have families to visit them, or they have been abandoned; volunteering to visit gives them the assurance that someone in their community cares.

Give your leftovers to those in need.

Did you know that there are people out there who are willing to feed on your leftovers? They are not homeless or poor, in fact some of them have normal jobs; they call themselves freegans. Freegans feed on dumpster food as a way of life. You can save them the diseases and time by giving them your leftover food.
Homeless people search for food in dumpsters too, why don't you put aside the good food for them to pick up without mixing it with the rotten eggs?

Garbage pickup

Littered communities are not the healthiest places to stay. You can start collecting trash with a small group of friends, or schoolmates. You will be surprised at how fast your small group will grow. Some people in your
community just need someone to start a mission and they will support you. Encourage people to recycle plastic and glass wastes. Small steps like these are also ways of giving back to the community.

Community watch

Sometimes I wonder what the human race has come to. There are some communities where your house can get broken into with other people watching, or child abuse happens right in front of other people's watch. You could take an initiative to report such problems as pet abuse or child molestation to the police when you see them. You do not have to dedicate your time watching how other people run their lives, but how many times have we ignored crime? By reporting such crimes as over-speeding or drunken driving to the authority, you could save someone's life because many people die everyday as a result of this irresponsible behaviors.

Offering childcare services

If you are a stay-at-home mom, you could volunteer to help take care of other women's children in your neighborhood. There are so many people who need to go to work to support their families, but they can't afford to hire nannies, pay for expensive daycares are baby sitters. Why don't you give them a hand? You won't lose anything; in fact, you will have other children to play with your own while you perform other tasks.

Volunteer tutoring services to your community

If you go to school, there is at least one subject you enjoy or understand better that someone needs help in. If you did not know, teaching others what you know is a good way to reinforce what you learned in class. You can also learn new ideas while helping other people. It is actually a win-win situation.

Volunteering your services to your community can be so much fun if you get involved in activities that you actually love. Just offering your company to a someone who needs it could save their life. You do not have to help children in Africa for your contribution to the community to be appreciated. It is the small things we do that count.

In the world we live in today, it so selfish. Everybody worried about their selfs all the time. I understand that we have to take of ourselves, and put ourselves first, what SO many people fail to realize is how much you gain by doing for others, and doing a good deed for people around you. Unfortunately the world is too big for the work of just one person to make a big difference, hell the states is too big for the work of one person to make an impact. We can make this world a better place though, we can make the area around us a better place, I don't care who see it, who realizes it, do it with self gratitude in mine, do with your heart and the right place and most of all do it knowing that somebody will benefit from your help rather you know it or not. That is my challenge to you.


John G. Dunn II
jgdunn.blogspot.com