Heroes in Training

One community service project seemed to lead to another for Michael Patterson.
As Michael reminds us, "Kids don't have to wait to become adults to be heroes."

One advantage of growing up as an unschooler was having the freedom to actually go out and begin following this dream immediately. My parents were very supportive and introduced me to a huge list of charities and organizations that were dedicated to many causes. We started out donating our old things, collecting canned goods for food pantries, and making blankets for The Linus Project.

This was where I got my feet wet in the world of community service. I started volunteering my time and labor with Boy Scouts, Salvation Army Christmas for Kids, and 4H. I even helped with my sisters in their Girl Scout projects.

As I got older, I started wanting bigger projects and more of a leadership role in them. So, I became coordinator for a homeschool group participating in Teens Make a Difference Day, working on a large scale landscaping project for Habitat for Humanity. I lead my Eagle Scout Project to collect eyeglasses for people who couldn’t afford their prescriptions.

The list kept growing and growing.

The world, as it is, has innumerable problems. Poverty, education, climate change and countless other issues are talked about every day. However, in my humble opinion, that’s the real issue. People will sit and talk for hours upon hours about the latest crisis, and usually ​the conversation turns to criticizing one person or group for their failure or inaction, or worse, concluding that we’re all doomed.

This is not going to make any change happen. Only action can do this.

We, as homeschoolers and unschoolers, have a great advantage in helping children not fall into this pattern of complaining and apathy.

We have total control over what we do with each moment of our lives. There is always a chance to jump in and be the change that you want to see. Volunteering for projects makes you part of the solution instead of part of the obstacle. There are projects and organizations everywhere dedicated to all kinds of causes. Start small with things like collecting coats for homeless people or volunteering for an hour or two at the soup kitchen. Before you know it, you’ll have caught the volunteering bug.

Kids, I find, are even more likely to want to get involved once they see how easy it is. Who wouldn’t want to be able to say this to their friends?

“Yeah, this weekend, I helped build houses for people that don’t have a place to live!"

A lot of apathy is out there and at some point we all face it, wondering if our little efforts mean anything.

In the Peace Corps, I definitely had long periods of thinking that nothing I did actually improved English education in my little town. But my boss, Greg MacDonald, seemed gifted at being able to work with volunteers. He could look at the efforts of anyone, no matter how burned-out they felt, and could motivate them to pick themselves back up.

He would tell me: