[Community-service] Discussion starter

[Miranda]

Hi,
I believe that community service should benefit others, no matter whether they have a disability or not. For instance, I am visually impaired, but I take the opportunity to volunteer in my local community in a variety of roles that have nothing to do with blindness or disability. In fact, I do not typically hold any volunteer positions related directly to visual impairment or disability as a whole, as this is not the only area of service that I am passionate about. I believe that limiting oneself to volunteering within the disabled community (unless you have your own personal reasons as to why you do so) is just that, limiting. Society already places us in the blindness or disabled box, so why should we help to continue this stereo typical trend? It is my belief that we are just as capable of volunteering outside the disability community as we are volunteering within it.
Thanks for starting this discussion, and have a wonderful week!

Best wishes, Miranda

Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 24, 2017, at 2:08 PM, Darian Smith, President, National Federation of the Blind Community Service Division via Community-Service <community-service at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> Just figured I would put this out there to get  some debate going.
> In a general  sense, the definition of community service can basically be boiled down to doing something for the benefit of a group of persons.
> In the NFB, we might consider community service  as anything we can do for the benefit of blind people, both within our membership and outside of it.
> In the Community Service Division, we tend to look at community service as a thing that a blind person might do that would benefit the larger community, not just other blind folks.
> We believe this distinction is important to make because often society believes that the only way that a blind person  can do good  is  if they are doing that  good within the bounds of blindness and the blind community.
> Do you agree with this assertion? Disagree? why or why not?
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