'Service is its own reward' by Liz and Jay Scott

This week we wanted to do something a little differently on the blog. Below you will find an op-ed we wrote that appeared in the March 18, 2009 edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer. As you will find, it is our take on community service and the incentives that are being proposed to motivate young people to get involved. While we would love to see the number of youth participating in community service increase, we also know from firsthand experience that the true reward for participating is helping others, and not financial gain.

We stand behind the sentiments made below, and we think our thousands of stand hosts would feel the same way. Let us know what you think, do you agree?

COMMENTARY

Service is its own reward

By Liz and Jay Scott

Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer

President Obama recently proposed incentives to get middle and high school students involved in community service, including financial aid for college. If young Americans commit to community service, Obama said, "We will make sure that you can afford a higher education."

We applaud the president's attempts to create change in our country, and a targeted community-service program has great potential to do just that. However, the financial benefits proposed should be secondary to another motivation: helping others.

Through Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer, which was founded by our daughter, we have seen firsthand that young people reap the true rewards of community service in the satisfaction of doing good for others.

Our daughter Alexandra "Alex" Scott taught us many lessons in what would ultimately be her short lifetime. One of them was that sacrificing her own comforts for others made the biggest difference.

When Alex said she wanted to start a lemonade stand, we were happy to oblige, but we figured that she would want to buy something with the proceeds. We were surprised to hear that her only desire was to give the money to her hospital to help it make a difference for kids with cancer.

Since that time, parents and teachers have told us that their kids seem more motivated to run lemonade stands when the reward is helping others, rather than personal profit. Children have given up their birthday presents to collect donations, given their allowances or money earned through chores, and even collected loose change to contribute to the battle against childhood cancer.

If we monetize community service, offering rewards for doing good deeds, aren't we defeating the entire purpose?

Community service teaches us so many important things. Perhaps most valuable for the country, it builds character. It teaches us to care about each other and the experiences of those around us. It should be required so that we all grow as people, and that we do so together.

Through our experience with our daughter and the work of Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, we have learned that many powerful lessons can be garnered from community service, and that perhaps the most important is pride in our own contributions to others.

We hope more Americans will commit to community service, and we also hope that they will do it for the right reasons. Education is important, but community service done for nothing more than the greater good might just be more important than anything an education can teach us about the world.