>It also seems that we should each take some personal responsibility, and help whomever we can. It is too often that we pawn off our responsibilities and moral

>It also seems that we should each take some personal responsibility, and help whomever we can. It is too often that we pawn off our responsibilities and moral duties on society.< So very true...the single most important thing a person can do to strengthen a community--interpret community as broadly as you like--is to spend time helping those in your immediate vicinity...I'm prescribing this because of it's accessibility; it's a course of action available to anyone, usually costs little, and leaves you feeling pretty darned good... First-hand case in point: A boy who lives a couple of miles away from me started dropping by occasionally to visit...he'd pedal by on his bicycle and stop to chat if I was out in the yard... During our visits I learned about his circumstances...his father, a drug user, committed suicide in the shower of their home when he was 6 years old...his mother had had a series of boyfriends, and there were 3 partial families--14 people--living in his house, a 3 bedroom trailer... As we got to know each other a bit better he asked me one day,"Hey, everyone around here calls you the computer man; how could I learn about computers?" I told him I could teach him a few things, and did...he would drop by when my schedule permitted and was willing to sit for as long I was willing to teach him things...just basics, a few tricks... I could tell that he had a quick grasp of the material, and asked him how school was going, his grades, etc...turned out he had around a 3.7 GPA, and admitted that he never studied outside of school... I told him one day that he should consider college...the next day he said he had mentioned what I said to his mom and she flatly told him,"We can't afford something like that". To make a long story short, the state that I live in offers a program that essentially pays (combined with grants, and college scholarships) for those below a certain income level to attend 5 years of in-state college...I spent several days gathering information, presented it to him, and told him I thought he could do it...he just needed to sign up in the program right away, and keep his grades up... Rather predictably, his mother was initially skeptical, so at his invitation I visited with her and explained how this would work... I'll leave the story here...he's a junior in high school now and is on track to enter college in 2017...he would have never become aware of the opportunity if I hadn't mentioned it to him, and all it cost me was about 2 days of research and another day helping him apply... we'll see how it goes...