Kinsley High School
Kinsley, Kansas
Teacher: Dr. Galen R. Boehme
How to Impact Our Communities
By Joshua Petty
12th grade
To make an impact on our communities we must trust others, become more involved, and learn from past experiences.
If we wish to truly impact our communities we must first define the term. A community can form in several different areas. Some communities we all have in common are the world, national, local, our nuclear families, extended families, ancestors, and close friends. We have a role in all of these, though that role may be more prominent in some areas than others. I define community as a sharing of interests, goals, and location with a group of people. People today have interrelated involvement with several different communities.
In order to impact our communities we must first…trust the others within that community. I have experienced this during my basketball season. During the season we had many different situations that required all the players to…trust…teammates. If we did not trust each other we could not have accomplished as much as we have over the last two years. It is a trust that I have in them that I will not be able to replace later in life. Also I have trusted my family ever since I was born. When I was a young child I depended on them completely for food shelter and clothing. If it were not for my parents I would not be the person I am today. This took a great deal of trust for me to depend on them so heavily. Now that I have grown older and I have become more self-sufficient I am about ready to move out of the house. I understand that I can turn to the rest of my family for support and advice. I no longer depend on them for the everyday items. It is trust such as this that has helped us to become such a tightly knit family.
The next aspect we must have to impact our community is involvement. If we can stay involved in our communities we can help each other through the good and the bad times. I have been able to stay involved in many different communities through my church. Throughout my years as a member of the First Christian Church I have made it specific point to help others. The well-being of others has always been a primary concern with my church family. My church involvement has helped me to impact my world, national, and local communities. We have impacted the world with donations to mission projects, and our pastor Rev. Sara even went to Kenya for two weeks on a mission project of her own. I have helped the national community when we went to New Mexico to distribute food to the hungry. Our local community has also benefited from our church’s generosity. Every year we have many different activities and fund raisers so we can donate to our local food bank.
Another way we can impact our community is to learn from past experiences. A situation at the world level is Operation Iraqi Freedom. Though I feel the cause is a noble one, there must be other ways in which we could go about this. The past experience that we could learn from is the conflict in Vietnam during the 1960s and 1970s. Again the purpose of this conflict was noble but we have to consider if it was really our war to fight. Also we must consider if the native people really wanted the war. It has been said that the Iraqi people feel that the Americans are trying to conquer, not liberate the people in Iraq. We need to prove to the people of Iraq that we are there to liberate them and help them, not just for the oil. We can also learn from past mistakes with health issues. Many people make bad decisions even though they have seen the consequences of these actions from another person. For example my family has a history of lung cancer. In this instance it would be absolutely ludicrous for me to pick up the habit of smoking. I have also had family and friends die in car accidents because they were not wearing the seatbelts. So why then would people not wear them? And why would people still smoke?
If we could learn from our mistakes, we would develop into a better and more efficient community on every level.
In conclusion if we can learn to have trust in each other, become more involved in our communities, and also can learn from our past experiences we can have a bigger impact on all of the communities we are involved in.