You’ve probably participated in a community service project before, whether for an organization’s service hours requirement, a team volunteering project or maybe as a holiday tradition. At a time of mass inequality, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world needs help. For this reason, community service sounds like a great idea, right? Gathering clothing donations, serving food, tutoring children — these are all greatly impactful and selfless actions for individuals to take.

Except, lately, we’ve seen that it isn’t so simple.

As social issues like income inequality, food inaccessibility and homelessness are increasingly brought into the spotlight, people are starting to consider how their daily actions play into these larger issues at hand. This definitely makes a case for a greater need for people to get involved in their communities and help people who are struggling. At the same time, though, this highlights the need to rethink how we do community service if we want to see changes occur in the long term. I feel, now more than ever, there is a strong case for connecting this daily work of community service to social justice in order to change systems that make this work necessary to begin with.

I have seen what it can look like to connect these two through my involvement with Hinman College’s Public Service Learning Community since my freshman year, where I am now a residential assistant (RA). In my time here, I helped build a partnership between Public Service Learning Community students and a local community organization, NoMa, that helps support and economically uplift the “North of Main” community that faces a high poverty rate. Not only do students volunteer with them, but they are encouraged to show up consistently at the NoMa Community Center and take time to learn the center’s goals or motivations through conversations with community members. We’ve also implemented regular group dinners where students reflect on these experiences. Everything we do is deeply guided by what the community members at NoMa tell us to work on to both meet immediate needs and create long-term change.

From my experiences, I’ve learned how much of a difference two main ideals can make: curiosity and connection. If you care about social justice, I truly feel that practicing them can deepen your community service work. I believe that anyone coordinating community service projects for groups or volunteering themselves can benefit greatly from practicing them, as they are often missing in typical service work.

One of the most important habits I’ve gotten into whenever working with a community organization is taking lots of time to listen and learn before jumping into action. James Ryan, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, told students in a speech that if they want to help others, “always ask questions” and be curious, instead of assuming they know the best way to help. It’s well documented that food drives, for example — a community service staple — are massively inefficient, often conducted without consulting organizations on if they even need nonperishable foods. Despite this being a knee-jerk reaction to helping homeless shelters or other organizations, without actively seeking to learn what the best way to help is, it falls short. Curiosity makes for better work supporting organizations in the moment and also opens the door to understanding why these issues are occurring.

Another habit of mine is connecting with organizations and community members to truly understand their cause. The idea of “solidarity over charity” is getting popular as people stop seeing community service as a neutral, nonpolitical action and instead viewing it as a decision on how to best use resources — time, money, etc. A charity approach is seeing people need help, thinking of the best ways to help them, giving that help and then leaving. It is the active decision to help in the moment, but to not go further than that. It’s not truly curious or connection-building. It sometimes incorporates the recipients of help into planning discussions, but oftentimes ends up being one-sided.

Solidarity goes beyond temporary help as a means to support the people who we see are struggling. It also includes working together with them to see what could best be done with the resources at hand to aid their cause. It could still be the same action as one would do in a charity approach, but the difference is you decide together with them by having real conversations about what to do — and the work doesn’t usually stop there. To explain solidarity in another way, when your friend needs help, you don’t assume what they need. You empathize with them and are there for them. Jenna Kisling, a licensed clinical social worker, writes that “empathy involves putting yourself in the other person’s shoes and understanding why they may have these particular feelings … [and] becoming aware of the root cause of why a person feels the way they do.” I believe that this philosophy can be applied to community service work, where we can look beneath the surface and ask why issues are here and what can be done about them.

Solidarity is building connections, listening and working together. Charity is helping and then leaving. Even if it isn’t possible to be involved in something long-term, I believe the mindset still makes a big difference. This is something I had to keep reminding myself of last year when I served as Hinman College Council’s vice president of service, where it was difficult to do long-term work in a position I only held for one year. This philosophy guided me, though, and pushed me to have conversations with community members I intended to support. Building these real connections and working on the same side as organizations in our communities eliminates the line between short-term community service work and long-term systemic change, and opens the possibility for working with community members together to do the best thing that will support them.

What it boils down to is asking questions when we are engaged in community service work about root causes, what our role in those communities is, how we can best create the positive impact we want to create and how to do so thoughtfully and collaboratively. Even if we don’t get the same answers, these conversations are essential.

This is not to say that traditional community service projects have no impact. Systemic change doesn’t happen overnight, so in the meantime, people need to be fed, clothed and housed. These are impactful and important projects, and, a lot of times, it is true that not everyone can show up every week to a community organization or form a yearslong partnership. However, if you are a student leader getting your organization to volunteer or just doing it on your own, staying curious as you figure out how you can make the best impact and finding ways to be connected to the people you’re working with can be transformative. In my experiences, this is how we can move toward achieving social justice and addressing the issues that make our community service work necessary. This is not easy, but it is possible, and with increasing calls for addressing social justice issues all around us, community service cannot exist separate from this changing world.

Maximilian Kurant is a junior with an individualized major in social systems.