Getting the Government out of Community Service

We live in a time when we tend to look to the government to do a lot of things. For some reason, we tend to think that just because we have to pay taxes, it is our government’s job to fix everything that is broke and arrest anybody we don’t like. But if we can get a more rational view of what the government can do and moreover what it cannot do, we then can define what is local and should be handled by people in our own comity.

There are many projects that are just outside of what the government ought to be sticking their noses into. This is particularly true concerning the federal government. Too often we push to the national level discussions and decisions about the quality of life in our own communities when no matter what the federal government does, nothing will make our communities a better place to live more than people coming together as neighbors to make it so.
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What’s in it for Them

Have you noticed how many of the really big businesses in every community always seem to also put a lot of effort into community service projects? If you look closely at the promotional material these companies put out, you would accept that the reason a business might decide to dedicated a few thousand or hundred thousands of dollars from their vast corporate coffers to help out the community because they “just want to give back to the great community we all live in.”

That sound pretty good to be sure. But it helps to dig a little deeper. We all know that the purpose of any business is single minded and that is to make money. They have an obligation to their stockholders or their owners to make as much of a profit as they can to return to those investors a good reward for the initial investment they put into the business.
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Merchants Reach Out

Sometimes we see some tremendous acts of community service that one of the really big businesses in town takes on. A huge international bank may donate some huge statue to the local park. A big oil company who has been in the city since it was started might fund a library or a new museum. When these things happen, those big businesses usually get their names attached to those projects. And while we are all grateful for the contribution these businesses make to our towns, nobody is kidding themselves that they just do that as part of smart business and to take the write off.

It is sad to be so cynical but when we think of true community service, it isn’t some massive company that has no real face or personality to us that really makes a difference. It is when that local merchant who runs the local five and dime or ice cream shop or that new business getting started pitches in that we really see the “community” part of community service start to mean something.

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Community Service is a Family Affair

Sometimes we think our kids never listen to us. This can be a particularly difficult problem when kids become teenagers. It seems that no matter what we tell them, they just shrug and give us that obnoxious response of “whatever” and we make no impact at all.

But any child or youth counselor will tell us that this is absolutely not the case. That outside show of indifference is just that, a show. Teenagers do not jump from children to sophisticated, hardened and cynical adults in few weeks or months time. The emotional growth of a human at this age moves along just as slowly as when they were children. So even though they are adult looking on the outside, on the inside you still have a very emotional little boy or girl who want nothing more than to please mom and dad and still try to figure out this new world they are living in.
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Habitat for Humanity Miracles

There may be no more recognizable organization name that comes to mind when we think of community service than Habitat for Humanity. This is an organization that does not view world poverty or reaching out to the disadvantaged as just subjects of speeches. Habitat for Humanity literally puts their backs into the mission of helping the disadvantaged, one home at a time.

There is no doubt that the high profile “celebrities” that have worked in Habitat for Humanity have done a lot to raise the awareness of the community services this fine organization does in communities around the nation and around the world. President Jimmy Carter’s tireless work with Habitat for Humanity has left us with even more powerful images of his leadership than perhaps he left us when he completed his term as President.

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