Has anyone heard of this?
It was brought up at the first AAUW meeting of the year that there was a "call for a national Day of Service" to commemorate Sept. 11. And there was a rather strongly worded missive that branches, if they were not planning on doing something, should encourage their members to do "something." And we're expected to document it and send it in to the national leadership. I suppose so they can preen over it and take the credit.
Well, as I am employed full-time (and then some, some weeks), finding something to do will be a challenge. There is a blood drive on campus and that would count...but then I would not be eligible for the late October blood drive at my church - and really, doing that is more important to me, because if there are enough donors, if a member of the church needs blood, they are not charged for it.
I haven't heard of anything happening on campus other than the blood drive.
But I have to admit, the wording of the letter irked me...the implication that you weren't patriotic if you didn't do something...and the fact that NO ONE in my group had heard of this push before the letter came out. And the fact that any volunteer work done at "other" times apparently doesn't "count" - never mind that there's a town trash-off the end of this month, or that I often go out to the Youth Camp to help cut brush and such.
So is this just something the national leadership pulled out of thin air, or is the National Day of Service concept something new that I've just been ignorant of (because of my general avoidance of watching large quantities of news)?
Yeah, I know. I should just refuse the ticket for this guilt trip.
3 comments:
I've heard a little about it, but not much. Here's the (automatic video starts playing) website: http://911dayofservice.org/
Their service finder does not actually find anything around me that's actually happening on the day itself.
The government website is this: http://www.serve.gov/ Again with the not finding anything around me for the day itself. If Providence doesn't have anything specific for it (some people from here commute to NYC, there are all of the colleges, and there was a big push for the Columbus Day Day of Service last year), then I don't think there's much specific going on. Since everything both sites lists isn't 9/11 specific, I think other days ought to count just as well.
Googling around also revealed that people on both sides are using this as a political issue.
I think a National Day of Service is a good idea but I HATE the way organizers often get all prissy and totalitarian and act like they own an idea and if you don't do it their way you don't count and are considered a non-participant at best.
I think anything appropriate that you do does count even it's only a small, private thing - like doing a little something nice for a neighbor who has a family member stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan.
I don't think this is a widespread action. I've only seen it mentioned on a couple of blogs, nothing in newspaper or radio here. I'd be inclined to pass on the guilt trip. It would be interesting to know where this was generated and what the purpose of it is beyond "remembering 9-11."
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