Walter Alvarado

EXPLR 292
01/22/16
Reflection A
From a very early age, community service was a very important part of my life. My
parents believed that we were graced to have everything we needed and that we should help
provide to those who weren't graced with the needs we received. For this reason, I was exposed
to many volunteering experiences that my parents believed were important in my child
development and me becoming an essential part of our community. Although they influenced me
to learn about community service and helped initiate my experience, I always found it as an
important part of my life. All this being said, Adam Davis, writer of What We Dont Talk About
When We Dont Talk About Service, raises issues about service that I never thought about and
now believe to have committed. These issues make it difficult to do community service because
it changes your views on what service truly is, how you see community service, and what is
actually good service that helps the community or the people in it. This in turn, makes it difficult
for people to give service in the first place. Thanks to my parents teachings, I was fortunate to be
raised with a set of values that I believed to be fundamental when giving service.
As a consequence of my parents being raised in a poor community in Ecuador before
moving to the US, they learned what it meant to be poor and have the bare minimum of lifes
necessities. The tough conditions they were raised in instilled a set of values in them that they
later passed on to me. They taught me how to be generous, appreciative for the things I had, and
gave me a perspective of living a life of having many necessities instead. For this reason, they

sent me on many community service projects and had me volunteer in many different events.
Most of the volunteering I did under my parents influence was religious. For example, they had
me volunteer as an alter server at a Catholic mass on Sundays. Services they had me do, that
were nonreligious, include going to fundraising events and making food for shelters. After my
parents made volunteering an option, I saw myself still volunteering at all chances. I joined a
community program called Banyan located in Minneapolis. They were a program that
transformed lives by developing youth, strengthening families, and creating community. I joined
this program around seventh grade and volunteered in many projects such as Feed My Starving
Children, different soup kitchens, and just picking up trash around the community. I approached
many of these community service projects with excitement and gratitude that I had an
opportunity to help someone. Usually as I finished helping someone in some manner, I would
feel quite sad because seeing/knowing other people face hardships in life such as having just the
necessities of life. For quite some time after volunteering, I would feel happy I was able to
provide help to someone but I would feel guilty or saddened to know that someone is in that
condition while I have everything I need and more. Over time, I learned to accept the realities of
different peoples living conditions and the life they are given; making volunteering easier. But
after reading Adam Davis What We Dont Talk About When We Dont Talk About Service, I
gained a new perspective and opinion on community service.
Adam Davis in his work discusses issues about the way people see community service,
why they do it, and how it is not spoken about as much as it should be. First, community service
is seen, from the person doing the community service, as something to gain or a way of positive
impact towards them. This perspective on community service is in a way wrong because service

should be as Adam described it, nonremunerative. The many different views people have as to
what they gain from service,(some believe to be doing it to make themselves feel less sinful(the
cynical), others believe it to be for God(the pious, etc.) should be overseen by the happiness and
service they provide for those in need. One should not expect to receive nothing or at least very
little for the service they provide. People should see it as a way of providing for someone in
need, for someone who wasn't as fortunate to receive everything the service giver has. In no way
am I, or as Adam states in his work, saying people in service are less than those who give; that
they are unequal in value. I am simply stating that these people were less fortunate in the way
things turned out but can be seen as equals through them being human. This is a perspective I
hold and an issue Adam addresses.
Have you ever wondered why we don't speak of the service we do or how we feel? This
Adam addresses as an issue because people believe, To talk of service, to really look at it,
would require us to look closely at inequality. Adam believes that people serving think that by
serving people in need, they prove their superiority where people being serve demonstrate their
inferiority. We are noted as cherishing inequality, looking past actually paying attention to it and
made to conceive the actual idea that people are all equal. This issue helps Adam demonstrate his
main idea of inequality which he believes to be the main issue in service.
These issues make it difficult to do service because it makes one think of why they are
actually doing community service and makes them feel like they have a bad motive for doing
service to others. When I do community service, I like to think that I am doing it for right
reasons but knowing these issues, it makes me think of whether I am truly doing something and
if I am actually doing it for someone elses benefit. Most people will look at these issues now and

rethink their motives for volunteering or overthink to the point where they will no longer want to
volunteer. This can result in the participation of community service declining or gradually
increasing for the wrong reasons.
I am glad my parents exposed me to community service and encouraged me to help
whenever I could. I feel that through community service, I am making someones living
conditions better and knowing that makes me feel happier. I don't volunteer for my happiness
though, I do it for the development of someone getting a better future. Through these reasons for
why I do community service, I believe myself to be going past the issues Adam presents and
actually being of great assistance to someone. Others who believe community service to be about
them and how they feel, are falling right into the category of issues Adam gives and in turn are
doing community service for the wrong reasons. Maybe even doing service that is not beneficial.