Community Involvement: Getting Involved Outside the Box

When students and parents think of the words "extracurricular activities," it is probably synonymous with club, sport, or some fine-art class. However, there is another genre of activity that often gets overlooked: community involvement. This could consist of church (or other religious group)-sponsored community service projects, a neighborhood event-organizing committee, or a local leadership seminar. Such activities not only allow one to interact with members of his/her community, but also meaningfully contribute to the community.

For instance, one that I was involved in was Tempe Youth Leadership (which I found out about through the TUHSD scholarship web site :)). In this program, we gave up roughly every other weekend for a semester to meet important officials of the city (such as the mayor and the architects who are re-designing the downtown) to gain a better understanding of how a community operates. Similar to TYL is the Governor’s Youth Commission, whose mission is to increase awareness of community issues through youth volunteerism, more information is available at: http://gocyf.az.gov/CYD/BRD_AGYC.asp.

If you have a career interest, getting involved through the city of Phoenix in that division could even facilitate in determining whether you really are interested in that field; departments that you can contribute in range from aviation to the fire department to the city’s prosecutor’s office. A more extensive list is available on their web site: http://phoenix.gov/menu/rescomvolhelp.html.

There are opportunities on an even more local level, such as being on the organizing committee for Relay for Life or the Festival of Lights. Another option could be involved in an ethnicity or diversity group, for example, on the Youth Committee for the Indo-American Association.

Basically, the purpose of this post is to encourage you to view community involvement as equal in importance to a long list of clubs, and to demonstrate that you might already be involved in some of these activities.

-Shivani