By Aisha Espinosa
Staff Writer

Community service is not an unfamiliar topic to many students at Coppell High School. In fact, many students are involved in programs that help the community, such as Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts or even the Young Men Service League.

But how many students are fully committed to changing the world through even a small act of volunteer work?

Volunteer work and community service are two things that lead to empowerment.

If someone would have asked me what I thought about community service two years ago, I would not have said that I enjoyed it. I might have said that I only performed these acts because it was required.

That all changed the summer before my freshman year when my parents and I vacationed in Manila, Philippines. We visited family and friends, and I was able to finish up a project I had been working on for two years: my Girl Scout Silver Award.

At first, I was very reluctant to even attempt the momentous project – set up a library in a public school in my dad’s hometown. It took a lot for me to even work on planning my project, and by the time we got to the fateful summer, I was done.

I was tired of the project, of working and of having so much to do all the time. My patience was tested even more when I had to sort the books by genre, then by alphabetical order and then type out individual labels for them. After that, I card catalogued the books by hand.

If there was ever a time where I was ready to give up and be done with community service it was then. But then came the day that I actually set the library up. The newly built shelves smelled like sawdust, and even though there was rain on the horizon, there was not a brighter room than the library that day.

The students of the elementary school constantly walked by, trying to get a peek of the the new library and positively beaming at me when I looked at them. The principal himself was in and out of the room, bursting with excitement. That was enough to make my day, my week, my month, my year.

And it was then that I realized what community service and volunteer work really means.

It is not about getting the required hours, or doing something to say you did it. It is not about adding an item to your college resume. No. Community service is about leaving your mark on the world and changing it for the better. Community service is about leaving the world a better place than when you found it.

In a nutshell, it is about empowerment.

Forget people empowering you, go do it yourself. Go find something worth changing, and do something about it. Ignite a passionate, burning fire within that will spread to others, inspire others.

There is no better way to prove to yourself that you can do something wonderful, world changing, than to complete a project having an impact on society.