I was fortunate to experience my first-ever Buenafication Day last Thursday, and after taking part in this wonderful tradition I gained an even deeper love and appreciation for my school. Buenafication Day has been around for more than 100 years, but more recently it has become focused on civic service and engagement. I’m glad that this event made the switch over to civic service and I’m grateful for a day dedicated to helping the community, but one day is not enough to foster significant change.

I realized that events like Buenafication Day are popular because people can get their fix of service to make them feel good. However, most people don’t do any other service projects aside from that one experience. The needs of people in our community don’t stop after one day, so service projects dedicated to helping them shouldn’t either.

Buenafication Day is a great way to jump-start service and get people excited about helping but we need to realize that in order to truly help and better our communities, we have to set aside more than one day a year to service. We need to make it a priority and ensure that we are doing what we can to improve the lives of fellow community members.

We shouldn’t be completing service projects just because they are required or because they look good on resumes, we should realize that ultimately we lead a more comfortable life than many members of our community and we should want to use our resources to help those who are less fortunate. While we may argue that we don’t have the time or the money to truly help out our community, we are only hurting those people who need our help and our ability to give money and time to them.

I enjoy Buenafication Day and all that it stands for. I enjoy it because it has made me realize how fortunate I am and also how much more I can do to help others, even if this was uncomfortable for me to realize. We can’t strive for a better community one day and then stop. We have to turn service from a one-day priority to a 365-day commitment.

Photo by Mary Rose Timko