This past summer I attended the ELCA National Youth Gathering with the youth group. While we were there, we were to do a service project. At first we were assigned a physical labor project, like painting and mulching in the community. I was excited to do this project because I new that many people would see what we did for their community as they walked or drove by it on a daily basis. For some reason our project got changed and we were supposed to read to kids. I was not too thrilled because I don’t hang around kids much and I began to get nervous as the day of the project got closer and closer. When we arrived at the daycare everything was disorganized and we had to do a lot of waiting around. This made me very impatient and made me want to leave. I didn’t think these kids were going to want a bunch of strangers reading to them. I figured they would rather play games with each other.
When I was finally paired up with my kid, we sat down on the floor and began to read. The first story we read was about how an orange in grown and harvested. The little I was with didn’t know how to read except for a few words like “and” or “the”. I started to read the book and then a few minutes in, the little girl decided that she wanted to try. I was pleasantly surprised. I pointed to a few words as I read them aloud and she repeated the words back to me. We continued this process until she had to go home and she left with the books that I brought for her.
After she was gone, I joined some other members of the youth group and their assigned children. As I looked around the room, I saw so many smiles from the kids in the daycare and I heard a lot of laughter. It was in this moment that I realized the true meaning of service project. Before, I thought service project meant doing something for others that could actually be seen for many weeks or even years to come. After reading at the daycare, I found that service project actually meant doing something for other people to make them happy and that it doesn’t have to be something huge. It doesn’t have to cost money. The simple act of reading was a sufficient service project. Us youth group members made many smiles on so many young faces. We let them know that there are people out there that care about them and I think that is better than any painting job we could have done.
Evann Martin