Hey, everyone.

Has anyone ever noticed how incredibly difficult it is to get youth to volunteer? Or to go one step further and keep them volunteering? It is ridiculously hard to do.

One of the largest problems I find with volunteering (and this is just from personal experience) is that there is no tangible reward. For me, the greatest incentive to volunteer was the graduation requirement of 40 community service hours. Then again, that was my high school mentality. Now, I do it all the time. The summer is an especially good time for me to volunteer because it gives me something to do. I hate being idle.

I do know a few people who like to volunteer. My cousin is a prime example: She came home recently from a seven-month stint in Rwanda. She had no reason for going; she just wanted to help out, to see the world. Both of which she managed spectacularly.

One of my friends is also avid about donating her time. She has seven days left in her nine-month experience with Katimavik, and I’m kind of afraid what will happen when she comes home. As a person who has to be busy sixty seconds of every minute, sixty minutes of every hour, twenty four hours a day, she is going to lose her mind with the idleness of summer. Add to that the Katimavik experience of only two free evenings per week, and you have a ticking time bomb on your hands! (www.katimavik.org)

So, that’s two people. Out of… twenty? Thirty? Maybe I’m sitting in the wrong circle, or maybe everyone I know is still in the high school mentality. Both my cousin and my friend were never in that mentality to begin with.

My point is that volunteering is a great thing to do. The rewards, as I said earlier, are not tangible, but often far outweigh any paper or certificate that might be earned. With the risk of sounding sappy, they are emotional rewards that make each person feel better about him or herself.

The reward is the experience itself