Community service is donated service or activity that is performed by someone or a group of people for the benefit of the public or its institutions. Performing community service is not the same as volunteering, since it is not always done voluntarily. It may be done for a variety or reasons:
- governments may require it as a part of citizenship requirements, typically in lieu of military service;
- courts may demand it in lieu of, or in addition to, other criminal justice sanctions;
- school may mandate it to meet the requirements of a class, such as in the case of service learning or to meet the requirements of graduation.
Read more about Community Service: High School Graduation and Community Service, Colleges, Alternative Sentencing, Corporate Social Responsibility, Worldwide Examples
Famous quotes containing the words community and/or service:
“The poorest children in a community now find the beneficent kindergarten open to them from the age of two-and-a-half to six years. Too young heretofore to be eligible to any public school, they have acquired in their babyhood the vicious tendencies of their own depraved neighborhoods; and to their environment at that tender age had been due the loss of decency and self-respect that no after example of education has been able to restore to them.”
—Virginia Thrall Smith (1836–1903)
“For those parents from lower-class and minority communities ... [who] have had minimal experience in negotiating dominant, external institutions or have had negative and hostile contact with social service agencies, their initial approaches to the school are often overwhelming and difficult. Not only does the school feel like an alien environment with incomprehensible norms and structures, but the families often do not feel entitled to make demands or force disagreements.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)