Community: A Little Help Goes a Long Way

Food, water, shelter. These are the essentials for survival. However, access to these necessities is tenuous for many people in the world. Governments, while essential for large public work projects, often fall short when it comes to helping individual people and families. For millennia these gaps have been addressed through community. Whether it’s a church handing out food, a co-op managing a rural water source, or an impromptu team clearing up debris from a tornado, neighbors have always been an essential source of support. Why then, in this age of smart phones and spaceflight, does it feel like communities have dried up?

First, what am I talking about? Volunteering, community service, mutual aid, these words all mean slightly different things but they really boil down to one common theme: helping those around you without any expectation of financial or social gain. Most people watch TV or get on social media and they see the rat race of the world, the powerful businessmen and influential politicians, but rarely do they see the struggles and triumphs of the average person. The world wants you to focus on getting rich and powerful, but this often comes at the expense of helping the people around you. When people forget to help their neighbors societies start to fall apart. This is why community service is so vital.

Before I talk about how there isn’t enough volunteering in the US, I feel the need to set the record straight. People are still donating time and resources to their communities. Even in this world of social media addiction and societal shut-ins, the United States is still fueled by volunteers. According to AmeriCorps, the US federal agency for national service and volunteerism, in 2023 alone 75.7 million Americans (22.2% of the population) formally volunteered 4.99 billion hours of service, with an economic value of $167.2 billion.^[1] When we look at the data for informal volunteering, such as helping a neighbor, these numbers get even higher with 140.8 million Americans (41.4% of the population). This is incredible!

With all these hours of volunteering, you may be asking “Why are people doing this? Does it have any real value?” The answer to that is, OF COURSE! Better yet, let’s break down the different ways community service and volunteering help.

The most important thing community service does is improve the lives of other people. Most volunteer opportunities help at-risk members of a community, often providing essential needs, such as food, or providing comfort to someone whose life isn’t easy. For example, someone serving donated food to unhoused and low-income individuals are potentially providing that person’s only proper meal that day. What are the benefits of this? Well, the obvious direct benefits are that the person isn’t going hungry and they receive compassion that they probably don’t receive often. However, look deeper and you’ll see even more benefits. Today this person won’t have to dig through trash for scraps, won’t have to beg for food, won’t steal food from grocery stores or gas stations out of desperation. A couple hours of your time has the potential to help dozens of people’s lives be just a little bit better than they were before they met you, and all it cost you was not binging Netflix on the couch.

Don’t like food and have hesitations about interacting with unhoused people? Try volunteering at a nursing home. Studies have shown that volunteers at nursing homes and hospitals greatly improve quality of life for the residents.^[2] Want to help but don’t like interacting with people? Paint a fence at a church. Have mobility issues? Read a book at a children’s library or help at a mental health hotline. There are tons of things you can do to help and some don’t even require you to leave your home.

Let’s look at another positive aspect of volunteering: building community structure. Have you ever moved far away to a new city and not known anyone or anything there? Did you know most cities have free resources for people who are new to the area? I can pretty much guarantee these resources were created and managed by volunteers. Most city and museum guides are also volunteers. Any action that builds a community resource or helps a community function will bring the community together. A good rule of thumb, if a resource in your neighborhood doesn’t make money you can guarantee it’s being managed by volunteers and at least partially funded by donations. In this era of budget slashing important social programs, these community resources are going to become more scarce and especially more vital. As SNAP goes away, the need for community gardens will go up. As school funding is cut, the need for volunteer tutors and community managed after school programs will rise. Many things that people originally took for granted will disappear and only the efforts of the local community will prevent these social structures from collapsing.

We’ve talked about helping your fellow man, but what does volunteering do for you? After all, you spend hours of your precious time helping others instead of spending that energy on working or self-improvement. First of all, almost all community service is done outside of work and school. This means it’s being done on your off time. Second, most people spend this time being completely unproductive. For many Americans (and many people in modern countries) that personal time is spent sitting on the couch binge watching TV shows and movies. It has been proven many times that binge watching TV is incredibly unhealthy for a variety of factors.^[3] Replacing a couple hours a month of your couch potato habit with something good for the community is a great return on investment.

Not only is volunteering a better use of your time, it’s also proven to improve your mental state. According to The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), volunteering reduces stress, increases happiness, develops confidence, and helps a person find purpose in life.^[4] Personally, as someone who has struggled with mental health in the past, I find a lot of purpose and happiness in my volunteering opportunities. Even on weeks when I’m in a funk and struggle to get out of bed, a few hours helping my local farmers’ market perks me back up. Most people have stressful jobs and many of these jobs also feel thankless. It’s a breath of fresh air to do something that’s relatively stress free, where you actively see the benefits of your work as soon as you do it. (As an added benefit, when you volunteer at events most vendors will give you discounts and free stuff). In this economy, when mental health services are getting more expensive and harder to find, volunteering makes for an effective, cheap therapy.

I know I said community service is usually stress free, but there is one vitally important version that clearly isn’t: disaster prevention and response. As I’ve previously stated, governments are good at creating and managing large public work efforts, but they’re notoriously slow.^[5] The number one factor for emergency response is speed, which means organizations like FEMA – the experts on disaster preparedness and response – probably won’t show up in force until the most critical hours are long gone. Do you know who will be on site from the very first minute of the disaster? Your neighbors and fellow community members. Sandbagging before a flood can literally save towns, and while it’s physically demanding it can be performed safely before the crisis peaks. Likewise, chainsaws are relatively cheap but are one of the most important tools after a tornado. An experienced team with chainsaws and pickup trucks could easily unblock most roads and driveways before the local or state response teams get there. Not only does this help the supply teams distribute lifesaving food, water, and medical supplies, it also lets the professional response teams focus on more challenging efforts, such as downed power lines or critically injured people. These local response teams, whether formal or informal, are essential force multipliers when disasters strike.

Not good with power tools but still want to help? Medical care is always lacking after a disaster. Someone with CPR training and basic first aid skills is one of the highest needs after a disaster. Do you have a ham radio in your garage? A small generator or battery supply could make you the neighborhood’s only form of communication with the outside world if the cell towers go down. Maybe you just have a big supply of firewood and you help people get their fireplaces going after a blizzard knocks out power. Even better, take some disaster response training from professional emergency response organizations to make sure you do things safely. Knowing your skills and having resources converts you from a victim to an invaluable asset for your community.

We’ve talked a lot about the benefits of community service, but I think it’s important to put everything in perspective. Volunteering often provides crucial assistance for local communities, sometimes even providing lifesaving services to neglected populations. From food distributions, to after school programs, to painting a fence at a church, these selfless acts don’t just improve the neighborhood, they also improve you. Community service can teach valuable skills and build compassion and empathy in ways that are hard to replicate in this digital age. Best of all, millions of people are already volunteering here in the US! However, if 41% of the country is volunteering, that means 59% is not. Just think how much better off our neighborhoods would be if more people volunteered. How much better our community resources would be. How much more beautiful our towns and cities would look. How much kinder people would be now that they’ve seen firsthand the hardships of their neighbors and communities.

If you’ve made it this far, you may be wondering where the political angle is? That’s the beauty of community service, there is no political agenda! Being kind isn’t political, it’s basic humanism. There are as many conservative groups helping their community as there are progressive groups, because volunteering isn’t about showing off your political party. When Hurricane Helene hit the US in September 2024 it caused untold devastation across many states. Most locals decided politics were less important than saving and helping their neighbors. As former president Biden put it, “In moments like this, it’s time to put politics aside. Again, it’s not one State versus others, it’s the United States. You know, there’s no Democrats or Republicans out here… Only Americans are here.”^[6] Social media, usually a cesspool of toxic content, regularly showed just about every group you can think of out there helping: Democrats, Republicans, anarchists, socialists, libertarians, Catholics, Muslims, atheists. Community service – especially in times of crisis – help people see that we are more similar than we are different.

With all this in mind, when you think the world is starting to burn and everyone is going crazy, the best thing you can do is just help others. The late president John F. Kennedy said, “Ask not what the government can do for you, ask what you can do for your government,” but I think the more important question is, “What can you do for your community?”