Harmony Jenkins, Grand Canyon University
This reflection on community engagement explores the possible motivating factors behind adolescents’ decisions to engage in community service. I describe the events of a transformative volunteer experience with a faith-based youth leadership program in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The unexpected outcome of this week-long summer camp, called Kids Club, included the eager participation of many high school and young adult volunteers. My learning objective was to identify why adolescents, especially those experiencing hardship, decided to engage in community service. This reflection includes reviewing the literature regarding organizational stewardship, organizational socialization, prosocial personality, and religious moral foundations. I applied this research to my personal experiences, as outlined in my narrative of the events of Kids Club. Ultimately, I decided that all my proposed ideas were possible motivating factors behind the volunteers’ decision to participate in Kids Club. I concluded that shared faith was the common factor underlying every individual’s decision. This reflection illustrates the complexity of decision-making processes, which might be helpful to practitioners in nonprofit organizational management. Further exploring these intersecting factors would provide valuable insight regarding volunteer recruitment and retention in the faith-based nonprofit sector.
Key Words: reflection, community engagement, volunteer, organizational stewardship, organizational socialization, prosocial personality, Public Service Motivation (PSM), moral foundations, intrinsic motivation, social work, psychology, faith