Today`s Productive Youths

In an earlier blog, I referred to the youth of today as being materialistic. This is in part to the many media stories that portray the youth as being hell bent on acquiring whatever they can as quickly as they can with no regard whatsoever to the cost implications even though the same report revealed that they do actually earn a living as part time workers.  This reporting seems to be worldwide. A study conducted in the United Kingdom found that “The evidence in our research shows that negative media stereotyping of young people exists and has done for a very long time”. However, (Sir) Richard Branson stands on the side of youths and claims that youths are not given the chance to express their productive nature and there are no resources to help them be productive. When my 7 year-old son came to me the other day, I was taken aback when he asked me the following question: “Dad, is Chris going to get a lot of presents for Christmas?” And when I asked him why his brother should get a lot of presents, he said: “Because he works hard. He cleans our room, makes the beds, picks us up from school and takes out the garbage!” You see, I had not thought about it that way. When you consider all this by a 13 year old, and figure out how much it would cost to hire someone to do all this, a very conservative amount, if it cost $50 a week, would mean I would have to fork out at least $2600 every year! Then there are all these youthful musicians like Justine Bieber and Lorde. Lorde signed a record deal of up to $2.5 million and Bieber made $55 million in 2012. Alright, one might say that this is to be expected. Consider something more relevant then; many students today begin working part time while in high school and continue while at college or university. The trends for 2007 to 2010 show an increasing number of students working in order to pay for some or all of their tuition fees. Then there are more than 7 million youths who engage in volunteer work in order to help the underprivileged of our society.  Most people who volunteer are the youth (aged 15 to 24). These are the most energetic and contribute the most hours of volunteering. With a volunteer rate of 58%, and the estimated value of $50 billion, the youths aged 15 to 24 years could be considered to contribute $29 billion to the Canadian economy each year. There are many factors that cause a person to volunteer in order to help others. The first one is that they come from a long line of volunteers, since their parents volunteered, they also signed up. But there are other reasons too. A friend of mine who had been fighting a losing battle in losing weight, signed up for the 60 km walk to end cancers with Pharmaprix. Then she realised she was too heavy to walk 60 km. She joined a group and began training, working out, going to the gym. She lost more than half her weight and she has kept the weight off. She also raised a lot of money for the cause.

A group shout to celebrate a good fight

She has managed to get more of her friends involved and has been doing this for 4 years now. I have given blood, raised money, run to raise funds and I have helped in setting up and breaking up fundraising campsites.

Just before setting off on the 10km run 

Radiation Oncology Students (Dawson)

I feel good about this and I will keep on going. The motivating factor is the doing good. But is has other effects like being able to stay in shape (the work is demanding, cannot be out of shape), meeting new people, learning to network, increasing communication skills,

We are family

 practicing another language (ben oui! On est en quebec!) and getting to spend a lot of time outdoors (yes!) But getting back to the money saved and money raised, if there are no people to volunteer, there

Taking care of the needy

will be a lot of lonely and suffering people.