On Saturday, August 18, I attended the Korea Times College Expo to represent Volunteens Inc., a non-profit organization for which I’ve had the honor to serve president. While this was not my first time at the exposition, I felt more pressure than ever before to represent my organization and to spread our mission of service and sacrifice. It was my hope that I could spread even the slightest bit of interest to volunteerism. While I cannot speak on behalf of everyone who had walked past our booth, I had the deepest pleasure in knowing that more people knew about Volunteens Inc. and was reminded of the importance of volunteerism.

While many perceive service to be acts of physical labor, service is truly about putting your actions where your heart is. It can be as simple as sharing a happy memory or gifting a picture to remember one by. Volunteens Inc., for example, put forth a project “Sharing Happiness,” in which we shared customized calendars to hospitals in under privileged neighborhoods in Guatemala, Mexico, and other local hospitals in Southern California. It doesn’t always have to be about building houses, serving food at local homeless shelters, or even picking up trash at beaches. While all these things are meaningful in their own rights, it’s more important to seek out these initiatives without any sense of disgruntled obligation. So many high schools these days require community service as part of a requirement for graduation, but my involvement in Volunteens Inc. has shed any personal thought that volunteering had to be an obligation in any sort of way.

Undoubtedly, there were those skeptics who came by our booth and questioned the kind of work being done by Volunteens Inc. I’m grateful to the experiences I’ve been able to have by partaking in the organizations outreach projects, and it is my hope that I was able to aid in sharing a better perspective of what volunteering means.

<Jisoo Ku (Jserra Catholic High 11th Grade)>