by Anisa Chaudhry

Created on: September 16, 2008

Perhaps the greatest gift we could give to our youth is that of mandatory volunteer work. Yes, it's an oxymoron 'mandatory' and 'voluntary' but most of our young adults don't know any better to be able to make the choice of being a volunteer or not. Not to take away from the intelligence of our young, but they simply do not have the life experience to know what volunteering can do for our communities. Nor do they know what they will get back in return.

Todays teengers have excellent 'taking' skills but extremely poor giving skills. 'Mum can I have a laptop?', or 'Dad can you buy me a Wii for Christmas?', 'I want a Starbucks extra-hot non-fat, easy whip, half-sweet grande mocha. Oh, and I'll have a pumpkin scone to go.' On and on it goes. The average North American teen does not even know where to begin when it comes to giving back. How about we start in the schools with volunteer programs for teenagers?

Can you imagine what kind of change our communities would see if our children volunteered on a regular basis? It's an opportunity for teens to explore life and see the world with a different set of eyes. With all the organizations and hospitals in need of volunteers, the experience for our youth would be vast.They can see the lives of the poor who line up at the food bank or the local Salvation Army, the lives of the sick in our extended care units, the lives of the terminally ill children who lie in hospital beds, the lives of drug addicts and criminals, the lives of those paralyzed by violence, the lives of those who are grieving the loss of a loved one due to gang violence. Not only would they be giving back to the community but they would also be educated in a way that no school,teacher or parent could ever educate. The experience is the education. Volunteering would open their eyes to the real world before they even step out of highschool. It would help our young make better choices perhaps even reducing gang violence, school shootings and drug addiction.

Our North American Society shelters teenagers and children too much. We give our kids all the luxuries in the world but we forget to show them real life. Television, radio and video games are not going to teach our children what life is about. Quite the contrary. Television portrays an image of 'everything will always be OK.' TV promotes a superficial life. Most video games encourage violence. Our children have become immune to images of blood and gore. Born with a silver spoon in their mouths, our teenagers

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