Why I volunteer?

This seems like a silly question, yet there are tons of answers to this question. For me why I chose to volunteer comes down to something very simple. Many people volunteer with underprivileged youth, and I use to be one of them. I volunteer because I was a kid and my family was in a position that we used many of the service that asks for volunteers.

Growing up I had a learning disability in reading and in speech and my family was on welfare. I can remember going to the food pantries to pick out food and I can remember being on Medicaid. Why do I remember Medicaid? Because the glasses were so horrible, they really need better frames for kids on that program. But I was the kid that was flagged to no finish high school. My learning disability was so bad that it was hard from me to communicate and frustrating to boot. Where I could hear and put things together quickly I was unable to put it in writing. This made everything much harder on me because if you know anything about how standardize test works, reading and writing are huge parts of them.

This made school hard, but it got harder. I had the death of my brother when I was five followed by my mother’s death at the age of seven. Both were violent crimes and my mom’s case was never solved. They were both highly talked about and written about in my small town. This made it very easy to spot who I was, my mother’s death combine with my learning disability made school very hard for me. I hated school and hated going, I can remember nights sitting in my room crying because I couldn’t do my homework.

Schools had at this time start to focus earlier and earlier on careers and college, having you research and look into jobs during elementary school. This was hard on me even more because I didn’t know, even at that age, how I was going to make a career when I couldn’t read or write and was hard to understand when I talked. However I was able to shine in other areas, I was in chorus, I did plays and I began dance. But there was something else…

I had amazing people in my life. I had teachers who went above and beyond to help me and encourage me. And I had random people, like the women I talk about in the last post that took an interest in me. It was those random people who went above and beyond that helped me, that kept me going, until I was able to find the courage and belief in myself to push myself. If it wasn’t for those people I would have given up, I don’t know if I would be where I am today.

I am the success story, but I know that I am one of the few and that there are so many out there who had it hard then me and have to fight harder then I could ever imagine. But I know that if I couldn’t have done it alone, I can’t expect others to do it alone either. I volunteer because I know what it is like to feel hopeless and want to give up, and I know how much the smallest act of kindness and of support can mean.