STUDENTS AND SOCIAL SERVICE

We are born and brought up in society. From birth to death we go on receiving things from society. Social service is a way of giving back to society a tiny portion of what one has received from it.

Although it is the duty of each of us to do something by way of social service, students are best suited for social service because they are young, energetic, full of enthusiasm and fired with idealism and spirit of service.

There is no limit to the type of social service or work that youngsters can do. For example, students can undertake the work of teaching illiterate people to read and write. They can teach people habits of cleanliness and hygiene or can provide food, clothes and blankets to the poor and the needy. They can organize blood donation camps or provide first aid to the victims of accidents, and relief to the victims of natural calamities like flood, drought, fire and earthquake. Work can be started from the buildings wherein students live and can be extended gradually to cover their locality, village or town or even taluka and district. They should study the problems of the people and devise ways and means of solving them.

Students can take inspiration from great men and women like Florence Nightingale, the noble nurse called the Lady with the Lamp in the service of the poor; Albert Schweitzer who spent his life in Africa, Henry Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross; Mahatma Gandhi who lived and died in the service of humanity; Baba Amte who has devoted his life to the service of lepers or Mother Teresa, the divine angel of the destitute.

If students devote their spare time to some or any of the social service programs, there will be a slow but sure transformation of the society whose members will be better educated, better fed and better looked after. There will be fewer tears and more cheers. In such a society everyone will be trying to make everyone rise happy and everyone will find himself made happy, for individual happiness depends upon social happiness.