My family has been working with the Friends of the Library in our town to build a new library and to fund new books to fill it up. The main project that we have been involved with has been the “Children’s Millennial Wall”. This is a wall that will be filled with hand glazed tiles created by “children” in our town, the “children” are ages 0 -99. This project will help the children’s library specifically and will raise a fairly substantial amount of money. It will create a work of art that everyone in the community, and especially those who participated in it, will be able to appreciate. Those that have participated will have wonderful memories that will be available physically in the wall itself. Participants in the project will be able to find their tiles with a key, that will be perpetually available in the library.
My children participated in this project by creating tiles, by helping others create tiles, by helping their Mom organize the tile creation events and with the counting and sorting of the completed tiles. This participation has really given my kids a sense of accomplishment and a real stake in the new library. I loved watching them confidently assist others in creating tiles and explaining how the wall would go together in the end. They feel a true responsibility to help make the wall turn out the way the artist has planned it. This sense of responsibility and accomplishment, which they will have for the rest of their lives, is the real value of being involved. They will be able to bring their children and grand children to the library to show them the tiles that they created and the wall that they were an integral part in creating.
We owe it to our children to, first of all provide them with an example of volunteerism, and secondly with the opportunities to volunteer and serve others. We also owe this to our communities, our country and the world. A society of individuals committed to serving one another is a foundational element of many dreamed of Utopias.
