Importance Of Volunteering As Part Of Curriculum And Its Benefits

 1.     WHAT IS VOLUNTEERING?

Volunteering means to carry out a duty or a job without expecting repayment or remuneration. It is volunteering with one’s own free consent in a way out to help others. Volunteering can be individual or can be formed as grouping together for a common cause. It is just coming forward, enlisting, signing up in some activity, or a way step forward, advancing oneself in presenting without expecting and monetary assistance. It gives an individual immense pleasure in volunteering a service. 

2.                 WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO VOLUNTEER?

a.     Volunteering work in real time for social impact to contribute best part to achieve goals. 

b.        Volunteer community service across the world gathers emerging youth leaders who work for common social activities to bring a social change in society through service orientation. In real time how volunteers take action in remote local communities can be monitored and tracked. 

c.       It helps an individual to take initiatives through advocacy skills, leadership training and gives empowerment for youth specially.

d.  It broadens skills, develop new interests, involvement in the community.  entrepreneurial responsibilities, to develop communication more efficient manner, contribute towards society, capacity building nature etc. 

e.   One can get introduced to others during the volunteering, Personal orientation induction to society

f.         Supplementing or gaining experience with guided experimental learning curriculum, it helps build our confidence, transferable skills, self-awareness and cultural intelligence

g.      Especially for school and college students, some are introvert and extrovert nature. Volunteering programs can be good for introvert students, they can slowly erase their fear of speaking publicly and freely express their ideas and move comfortably. For extrovert students it can be best podium to share their views and notions. 

h.      It also gives placement assurance in companies. Adds a weightage to our academic. Though it is not paid, gaining experience and putting forth those experience gives fruitful results. 

3.                 BENEFITS OF VOLUNTEERING

a.          When one volunteers to help out someone such as a friend, teacher or parent, one is immediately seen as selfless and helpful. 

b.    When you help a teacher to clean the classroom or get involved in cleanliness campaign at the school or other community projects, your standing would be elevated. 

c.        Teachers and adults would look at a young person who volunteers his or her time for certain activity as mature, responsible and deserving of respect.

d.   In addition, volunteering with an organization such as orphanages, community centers and other non-profit organizations, one can interact with society at large. 

e.      Through volunteering time, effort and skills one would learn more than what money can buy. You can learn to be bold, assertive, independent as well express your opinions and gain communication and interpersonal skills.

f.      It allows one to become more mature at a relatively younger age. When you are exposed to volunteering at young age be it at the home front, school or their organization, you would learn the importance of responsibility in carrying out your duties to the best of your ability. Embarking on volunteer activities would enable one to learn survival skills such as ability to express ideas, hardworking and diligence.

g.     It exposes one to many interesting ideas and issues. Not only enhancing general knowledge, but how to deal with problems, challenges as well dealing with different types of personalities.

h.    Getting involved in donations, charity drives, Crowdfunding sources makes us involve in Corporate Social Responsibility, Independent and stand on ourselves.

 

Can Video Gaming Help Solve Real Life Problems?

 After being generalized as addictive and having predominantly negative side-effects, the opinion on video gaming has matured over time. Over the past decades, experts and people in general have acknowledged certain positive aspects linked with the space. As an activity associated with the younger demographics, it has become an established tool for habit building, problem solving and cognitive - skill development. With this outlook in mind one can argue that video gaming contributes to increased awareness and sensitivity. Thus, they can enable change via fostering characteristics like being spontaneous, reflexive and alert from a young age.  

Although this stands true, it is massively dependent on the nature the industry functions on, the responsibility the creators uphold and the intent behind the games. These games are on one hand, reinforcing the present stereotypes and on the other breaching the barriers of the current entrenched ideologies. Holding the power of instant gratification and enhanced interaction a video game today can shape ideas and define mindsets. If the industry limits itself to the propagation of ideas like violence and aggression, then we will have lost its currently untapped potential.

As famous saying reads that we can take the horse to the river but can't force water down its throat. This is a huge obstacle in realizing the objectives of textbook based education. In this context, video gaming has an opportunity to crack through the seeps and enable real life action. If these games can drive people to roam around roads to collect Pokémon’s, then I believe we can also motivate them to plant a tree, save water and take to the streets to solve real life problems, through the same medium.

If we can study and identify what makes video games so addictive and appealing, and apply them in real life settings, it can be an expressway to success. Video games instill in people a hunger to achieve time based tangible goals and become go- getters, which is key to solve real life problems. Stress issues are huge concerns today, the role of video gaming as a stress buster can help today’s minds focus on and crack the real problems.

Are Children Under 10 now Growing Up in a Different World Than College-Age Students Did? How is it Different, and What Does That Mean for Them?

A toddler who hasn't even learned to walk properly won't eat his/her supper without the ‘benign’ presence of a smartphone. Smartphones are the new baits that probably have replaced the candies and are an easy to go solution for parents to tackle their kid's tantrums. These kids are growing up in a technologically advanced world. They have experienced restrictions, masks, sanitizers, lockdown, and so on thanks to the pandemic. I can't recollect a single day in my childhood when I didn't go to play outside despite, however, the weather might have been. 

 

Nevertheless, they are provided with more opportunities in terms of skills they can avail themselves of any course online.  Ed-tech giants publicizing 5-year-olds learning to code have become a common sight.  When we, “Gen Z” were in that phase we never had much internet exposure be it in terms of exploring the web or social media in fact as I recollect the internet itself was a luxury. We grew up playing games like Snake Xenzia, sudoku, etc. on the classic Nokia keypad phones. 

 

However, I believe social media and internet exposure to these kids is more of a bane than a boon.  Parents should track the kid's activity on their phones as kids till attaining a certain age are naive and lack the maturity to single-handedly get exposed to everything available on the internet. Hence it becomes our responsibility to make sure they see good things. Video games involve a lot of violence, including fighting & killing. It results in kids as small as my 7-year-old cousin expressing aggressive behavior over losing a mere game at such a tender age.

 

Certainly, they are portraying adulthood traits and behavior inappropriate for their age due to unregulated exposure to apps that aren't designed for tweens. I wonder what kind of teens they would be, definitely astute than us.