Community Service: Should It Be Mandatory

Community service is the work that makes you feel that you’re beneficial for others and that your existence is valuable and I do appreciate this feeling so much and this is the main reason why I am committed to serve my community.

I’ve been asking myself for several times and for a long while how can I be beneficial for others and at the age of eleven I got the answer. I started being involved in school clubs (humanitarian, environmental, social). After being a member, I felt that I’m realizing my dream and that this what I want in life; serving others and helping them with all the possible means I own.

In the clubs, I was always chosen to be the chef of the organized workshops of charity because my friends and my teachers had always trusted me and believed that I am responsible and able to make things in the right road. We had to visit orphanages where we spent lot of time with our orphan brothers and sisters, also to gather winter clothes for the habitants of country sides, in addition to that, we had to earn money for children with disabilities to have medical operations or to buy wheelchairs, crutches, medicines and this was my favorite part. I always have been telling myself what if I were them, what would I do, how would I feel?

My parents helped me to forge my personality also to understand people, especially my mother; she always has told me to care about others and give them help if they need because nobody knows what future is hiding for us; and she adds one day you may live the same experience; so think about them just like how you would like people to think about you at that moment.

Currently, I am a parliamentarian child who stands for the rights of children all around my country and I’ve been selected to be the official delegate of my region Rabat-Sale-kenitra since I showed high interest into the rights of children. It is an important honorable occupation in Morocco because the child parliament is chaired by the king’s sister the princess Meriem and has real effects on the protection of Moroccan children rights.

We do organize meetings with international honorable status as well as ministers, advocates, international associations members, the UNICEF members, African mayors… in order to defend children rights and to underline the most important problems of childhood and to propose resolutions to be applied as soon as possible. In addition to that, we usually visit homeless children and we bring them what they need but we cannot force them to rejoin a center of childhood protection because the majority feel more comfortable in streets until we gain their trust, then we can ask them to rejoin a center.

I have been part of an initiative, related to education, in which we had to gather teachers of several subjects from all over Morocco, when the national exams were close, and we went to very far country sides in order to match them with those teachers who volunteered to help students get good marks. This campaign succeeded and 75 per cent of the participants had passed the final national exams.

I may add that I participated in Africities summit occurred this year in Marrakech city between the 20th and the 24th November as my region children’ delegate, in which I had to get more signatures to the petition launched by the national observatory of children rights chaired by the princess Meriem and the UNICEF. Here is the link so you may check the petition http://jenesuispasinvisible.com/i-am-not-invisible/ .

I had to convince very important people as well as mayors, Africans countries high status representers, associations directors and many other very important persons to sign the petition that call them to get involved in at least one action to restore dignity to children living or working in the streets. Finally, this campaign has been officially launched by the princess Meriem herself and we took Rabat the capital (my region) as the main city to applicate the pledge as African cities without children in the street.

Previously, I occupied the post of the general secretary in association of charity work and I participated in many events and charity campaigns and more. I may summarize all my participations in following realizations; I took part of the renovation of a very old primary school in a very far countryside also I had to celebrate religious and national ceremonies with patients in the hospitals and these were really my unforgettable moments ever because those smiles in their faces lost a lot in my brain and make me feel happy, make me feel something different, something GREAT.

In conclusion, real happiness resides in the hearts of giving persons and charity doesn’t require money or big things; your time, your smile, your attention make from you a giving person and make you feel happier than even the person who you served. So community service is the way to your intern satisfaction and your soul cure.