The Importance of Community Involvement for Children

Community involvement is often a term that can mean one thing to one person and quite another to another. It might mean charity fundraising, volunteering, or even just carrying an elderly neighbor’s groceries in from the car. Whatever your personal definition of community involvement, it’s really important to encourage your child to participate in some form, as that will enable them to develop a range of skills transferrable across several areas into later life.

In addition, community involvement is a great way to get your child off their phone and back into the real world for a bit, which they can use to help them put things in perspective and mature as a person. An international school in the UK researches the benefits of community involvement in greater detail below.

Teaches Empathy and Compassion

Unfortunately, children aren’t born with a sixth sense where they understand what others have going on but is something that can be learned. For instance, by getting involved in the community even just raising money for cancer research or homelessness, or another cause, helping out at a local care home or charity shop, your child will learn about the struggles of others. This would make them empathize and become considerate of people’s emotions since you never know what the other person might be going through.

Encourages Appreciation

As an adult, we realize not every child receives tons of Christmas or birthday presents; not everyone has a roof over their heads, and not everyone has three nutritious meals a day. This would be a pretty challenging for children to understand, especially if they have led rather sheltered lives until this point, but charitable work and involvement in community groups can certainly do the trick. Along with learning the value of empathy and compassion through this experience, it will also make your child feel much more appreciative of everything they have, which naturally leads to a happier, more fulfilling life.

Improves Various Skills

Among many transferable skills, volunteer work and other community-based activities will support your child in his academic and personal life. What type of work they engage in determines what can be developed through community involvement. Here are just some of those examples:

• By running a marathon to raise money for charity, or participating in sports fundraising, your child will become physically fitter, and will understand the importance of training and commitment to something.
• When your child gives their clothes and other things to charity, then the child learns the gift of giving.
• By working in a charity shop, your child will learn customer service skills from handling money to communicating with public.
• Traveling abroad and helping build a new school or religious edifice might just prove to be the catalyst for teaching your child some skills in carpentry. They might once again learn a new language or become better communicators.
• Most community activities will generally help children with overall independence and autonomy.
• Most community activities will help give children the opportunity to meet new individuals or even develop some social skills as needed.

Boosts Confidence

Children who engage with the community get acquainted with new people, learn various skills, and, in general, step out of their comfort zone. All this is a great way to help them gain more confidence in their abilities, which will then empower them to flourished moving forward.

Creates Career Opportunities

The skills and confidence achieved from being involved in communities are always a good thing for young people to put into their CVs and will give them a talking point in job interviews to come. All employers want to see practical experience from their employees, which many times could limit a young person’s opportunities, so it is really great to have some sort of work experience-even if it is volunteered.

Basically, children who are sacrificing leisure time to a cause are working towards a better future for themselves and others. It can even help them learn about themselves and what they want to achieve in life, both personally and in terms of a career.

Encourages Positive Habits

Meanwhile, a lot of parents are worried about the amount of time their children spend playing on digital devices starting from mobile phones and tablets to game consoles. Sometimes it is not so easy to find something that would keep them entertained without some high technology that seriously endangers their health. Volunteering for the community gives kids something to do that will be useful both for themselves and others. The kids are out there playing, and it’s a heck of a lot better investment of their time than sitting inside on the couch and stroking away on some iPhone.

Makes You Feel Good

Giving up some of your time, energy, money, or something for the good of others may help you feel pretty good about yourself. Often the little people in this world are lost, and they have no idea where they fit in, but volunteering can really open up their eyes to how small acts can be a difference maker.