Free Custom «Final Integration Paper» Essay Paper

Community Engagement and Social Responsibility

Just as has been the case in the community service that I have participated in courtesy of the course that I am doing in school, I have come to appreciate the fact that any sort of community service is offered by an individual or a group for the prime purpose of ensuring that the public benefits. This is very much unlike the thought that I have for a long time had in mind that community services can be twisted to help the people who involve in them. It is worthwhile though to take note of the fact that community service may not necessarily be a voluntary process.

As a matter of fact, the community service that I have personally been involved in helping the under privileged people in Pomona, California is a clear indication that the school or ones institution may have strict conditions that require their member to be involved in the community service. Despite this fact though, the fact that I was not a volunteer at the community service, I have learnt a mileage of things about community service and seriously broadened the little knowledge that I had pertaining social responsibility and community engagement.

 

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Community engagement came across to me as a very integral part of the society no matter the extent of the levels of independence in the various institutions of the society. From its definition, community engagement generally refers to the process of working together with groups formed by people who are affiliated in terms of their proximity geographically and special areas of interest. This forms a very effective tool that the society can effectively use to achieve a lot of sobriety in its economic and even environmental health. In short, community engagement acts as a catalyst that ensures reforms in the society mainly by mobilizing resources and parties in the society.

On the other hand, social responsibility basically is an ideology that tends to lean much on the ethical side of entities in the society. By entities it refers to the people, institutions and even organizations in the society. Social responsibility mainly requires from the people, institutions and even organizations that their activities in the society be driven towards the overall benefit of the society despite their individual goals and objectives. Social responsibility therefore simply helps to ensure that entities in the society have their activities limited against harmful acts towards the society (Deena, 2007).

Being involved in the community service helping the people at Pomona, California has been very effective in building in me the values of community engagements and social responsibility. From the fact that I was dealing with less fortunate people in the society, I learnt the fact that we need each others hand in the society and that just by having our selfish goals driving our actions in the society, then the less fortunate among us would perish all by themselves.

Relationship in the Volunteer Experience

At this particular point, I must confess that I was shocked with my own self. Initially as I was getting into the program, I knew that the people that I was going to serve were purely recipients for the whole process and I was the giver. It never crossed my mind that at some point I would benefit from the lowly rated Hispanics who worse of all came from low earning social groups.

The levels of humility and gratitude that was shown by the majority or virtually all the people I served were a huge lesson in my life. For once in my lifetime, I felt that I was a huge impact in people's lives. In other words, the Hispanics that I was serving at the Pomona, Ca came in at the opportune moment to raise my esteem in the society. I have never thought that at my age and financial status, I can be of any help to the society. This was opened to my eyes purely by the Hispanics.

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Although I was very much resistant to such kind of gestures form the people since I thought it was just another way of encouraging me to continue helping them it finally dawned on me that the society needs everyone's help at all capacities. Form this analysis; it is very clear that the main challenge that was posed to me by the people at the Pomona, Ca was the fact that the society is in need of help from every one and it is in the capacity that one is that you can best your society at that capacity.

Important social issues

Some of the important social issues facing the community include poverty, divorce, drugs, immigration. These issues are not easily solved due to a number of reasons. The community is integrated in that there are people from different backgrounds and origins not forgetting the various cultural and religion diversities. The community organization is trying to address a number of these issues through civil education and other major methods but most of these seems to be a challenge because based on the fact that this is a court house, most of these are handled in terms of a case and there is no much that can be done at this stage.  

Divorce is one of the social issues that have become a major challenge in the region and the community organization has gone to the root cause of the issue to try and manage it. Though the courtroom is set there to assist people in filling cases for divorce through a legal process, the major assistance that is offered to the people and especially to the poor is to assist them fill out the forms and to obtain justice. Some are even assisted with the service of an attorney (Sherman, 2003). To me this is not really the solution to this problem and much needs to be done regarding the issue of divorce based on the fact that this is an issue that is putting the lives of many children at jeopardy after the parents separate.

No person would really wish to see a family that used to be one disintegrated based on the fact that they can no longer co-operate or live together and this is usually the case in divorce cases. What we were doing in the courtroom was to assist these people to file the cases and to assist them access an attorney even for those who could not afford to hire one. This is because most of the people around were of the Hispanic origin and therefore were too poor to even afford to pay an attorney.

Based on the various things that I have learned, divorce can have very adverse effects to both the individuals involved as well as their children which are most affected, I felt the need to address this matter on a very serious note. The way this issue is being handled in the community is not satisfactory. In finding the solution to this issue, I would conduct a research on the main causes of divorce among the people in the community and find the solutions to these problems. It is after this that I would conduct a civil education to enlighten the members of the public about the issues that needs to be addressed in marriage to avoid divorce because divorce is usually not the solution to all the domestic problems. People should also take time in choosing their lifetime partners.

Life experiences

Life experiences have a great influence on what one becomes in the future. During the time I served as a community service volunteer in a court house in Pomona, I really learnt a lot of things which I believe will play a major role in my future both in my personal life as well as in my career.  Through this experience, my confidence was boosted significantly not forgetting the perfect training that I received giving me the confidence to face the future legal career with a lot of confidence and hope. The knowledge gained and the benefits that I derived from the entire exercise as far as the legal profession is concerned will play a big part in building my future career.

The recommendation that the attorneys who were assisting us during the volunteering exercise can play a major role in securing us a job in the future. As a result the time that we spent in the court house volunteering cannot be described as a waste of time. In addition to bringing major impacts in my profession, the experience will also serve as a very important role in my personal life. The various cases that we have handled regarding some of the common social issues among the community have really given me a good exposure into real life issues. This has given me some prior knowledge of how to handle such situations when they come along. The exercise has also instilled in me some virtues that I did not value in the past but some of which I have come to realize that they are not important. The exercise has enabled me to link the theoretical part of the learning with the practical part that is experienced in real life situation.