2011 Scholarship Entry #29: Marc Goudreau

What our society has yet to overcome is the need of social capital. Social capital, along the lines, is to grow as a society within the act of volunteering, giving your own free time to make others happy, and all the while gaining personal satisfaction.

I have been volunteering since the early age of 10 years old, and 9 years later, at the age of 19 years old, I still volunteer more than 400 hours a year. When I was 10 years of age, I began volunteering at a senior's complex serving dinner to more than 40 seniors. At the age of 14, I joined a Police Cadet Corps, where we put in more than 1000 hours annually of volunteering for our community. Just recently, at the age of 18, I applied and was trained to be a reserve police officer. I volunteer my time to serve my community in a way hardly any one would. In volunteering and showing altruistic acts, I have found what is important to me. It is not a matter of what motorized toys I have and what newest car I bought, it is not what material things I possess. I have found personal happiness, pleasure, satisfaction and approval in serving the public and serving my community in the interest of my society through volunteerism.

The only way to begin fixing this problem is to lead by example. Through volunteering at a very young age, I have lead by example. I have gotten many of my friends and family to help volunteer, and I hope they have done the same. Lets think about it.. If one person volunteers 10 hours A YEAR, and that person tells someone else who volunteers 10 hours a year, so on so forth, soon 20 people could be volunteering 10 hours a year for a total of 200 hours. 200 hours is a lot of time! Lets compare.... I spent two weeks in Nicaragua building a small pre-school for a little village called Cino Pinos. (It took us roughly 150hrs to complete. It was a volunteer project that my high school started.) That project took us just two weeks to complete. In those two weeks, I touched the lives of 30+ children who were going to attend that pre-school the following year. Do we see how in just a small amount of time, with a small amount of volunteering, we can touch the lives of so many people? By leading by example and taking initiative to do these kinds of things, volunteering becomes a way of life; a life that feels fuller, a life that feels accomplished.

I will soon be a police officer and I will lead by example by serving my community and hoping that our world soon realizes that within these altruistic acts of volunteerism and kindness, lies a life full of happiness, pleasure and satisfaction. Acts of kindness, volunteerism, and altruism are some of our biggest challenges as a society and our society is missing these acts of kindness and altruism.

What will you do to help our society?