Family First!

Many ETHS students are involved in community service projects. These efforts should focus on the Evanston area first and foremost.

The Evanston community should be your first priority when it comes to community service, as it is the closest region to your home. Often, students travel miles and miles to do similar tasks in distant regions which they know little and care little about. Why would you travel to do the same activity in a place you don’t call home? It doesn’t make sense.

There are some exceptions. Living in one of the more densely populated regions in the country, we can afford to allocate people and still have plenty of people to help, where other communities around the world may not have an adequate population to meet their needs.

Outreach service is most appropriate when disaster strikes. Situations such as 2006’s Hurricane Katrina or the 2010 Haiti earthquake, when students often take up projectslike home building, are fitting examples of when the efforts of service projects directly affect someone’s quality of life.

Community service projects are improving ETHS through the Sophomore Emerge program and the Community Service Club. Other students help the community by volunteering at local shelters and schools, to name a few.

ETHS students did 9,000 hours of community service during the 2011-2012 school year, 17,000 hours during 2012-2013, and 22,000 hours last year. These are impressive gains, but to put it in perspective, last year the average student did just over two minutes of community service per day, compared to 67 minutes of eating per day.

There are at least 20 local organizations, such as The Cradle, A Just Harvest, Family Focus, The Salvation Army and others, searching for your time any given week.

Besides fulfilling the moral obligation to give back to the community, students enjoy benefits such as an expansive knowledge of the community, spots in grade level honor societies, connections for future Evanston jobs in Evanston, valuable working experience, or just simply spending time with new friends.

Getting involved in any community service, with the right intentions, is beneficial to the world. It is up to you to sign up for projects which will help make Evanston and the world a better place.