Community Service- Lets begin a Journey to Serve

Penned by : Rtr Navyashree B C

Ikigai – A Japanese secret to a long and happy life. What caught my attention while reading this book is the word ‘PURPOSE - Find a purpose in everything you do.’

Most of us by some way or the other are part of Community Service. But very few know the realistic purpose of the same. And even few dig deep to know what it really means.

Knowing the path is very important to the reach the destination and to enjoy the journey it is highly important to be aware of the purpose.

Being a part of catholic education institutions since childhood, community service has always been a part of my life. But the very reality of what it is exactly and the need of it, was never known to me. As a youngster in my early 20s I was, as all other folks, focusing on education, employment & self growth. At this stage it was indeed, astonishing to see community service as a part of my university credits, a subject or in precise a continuous activity throughout my university days. This is when my mind started raising questions on the term Community Service- WHAT IS COMMUNITY SERVICE?

Even though I had answers of my own and of course of the ‘search engine’, nothing satisfied me completely. The most common/basic answer for this question I knew or even drew conclusions from my little experiences was “Community service is nothing but helping the poor classes of the society”. I completely felt vague at my own conclusion, and here it started; quest to find out in precise about the term and definitely a definition which makes justice to such a weighted term.

To understand this I had to first reach the literal origin of the term COMMUNITY.

Community in simple terms is nothing but a group of individuals with common motive & interests. Around us we have numerous types of communities and we are all definitely a not a part of one but many of them. Diving deeper into this, we also see each community has it’s common goal, and to reach this they will be in need of certain resources/tools/support.

Ex: Student community:

Goal - Access to quality Education & personal growth.

Resource/tool/support needed – Teachers, educational institutions, guidance, Knowledge resources etc

Labor community:

Goal – To achieve professional success in their job areas

Resource/tool/support needed – Technical & soft skills, career guidance etc

Driving my way towards the meaning:

With this clear understanding of the term community, it was pretty easy for me to drive myself towards the answers for the question-WHAT IS COMMUNITY SERVICE?

Community service is helping a community drive towards betterment; helping all sorts of communities to reach their goals smoothly and dream for a better tomorrow. Each community might be facing a unique problem and same time thriving towards a unique goal. And here we come with Community Service, with a view to help them in any small/big way possible.

This, sums up my understanding of the term Community service, helping me realize well upon my previous experiences in this work and also giving clarity towards my future journey in this way.

WHY COMMUNITY SERVICE?

Another destination in our journey we need to reach is - Why community service?

Purpose, need of the hour and importance.

TBC...