Daniel Raser is a first-year Honors College student studying Engineering. Upon entering the Honors College, he had a strong belief in the importance of giving back and joined the Career with Purpose Changemaking Community. His passion for giving back to local communities stems from his experience volunteering for a youth lacrosse program his freshman year of high school. He worked on a team to help create a free camp for youth lacrosse players from Newark. He says, “Not only did the program inspire the kids to continue participating in athletics, but it also allowed the town to come together to create a dropbox for lacrosse equipment to give to the kids. With countless pressures, it is hard for many of these kids and their families to justify keeping their kids in recreational sports.”
In fact, this opportunity was eye-opening for him in terms of the disparities in privileges and disadvantages inherent to community sports clubs and teams. He explains, “I had failed to recognize that recreational sports were a privilege that many don't have and this experience allowed me to see the power that I have to help if I chose to commit myself to service.” In keeping with this mindset, he continued to explore other avenues of making sports accessible to his local community, and when his local youth football team was understaffed and reached out for help in order to continue the program, he took on the role of coaching kindergarten to second-graders. Since then, Daniel has continued coaching youth sports teams in his local community and views coaching as “a fantastic way to get kids involved and teach them life lessons that will stick with them without them even knowing.” He proposes that one of the best ways in which people can give back is to get involved in a cause that truly resonates for them and they feel passion towards. He says, “I feel that it is important to have a deep connection with the work you do to be most effective at it and that is why I find coaching one of the best ways that I can inspire and give back to my community.”
Daniel added,
“Many people, myself included, feel that the problems in the world are too big to fight and instead leave it up to others or ignore the problem completely.” Elaborating further, “Sure, the problems that face communities are large and take time to fix, but they are not going to be fixed unless someone starts trying. That is what I've learned from service work: there is always a place to start making change.”