A Caring Ambassador should be someone who works to take everyone into account in order to fashion a more loving environment. To create a more caring environment at my school, I’d reinforce the ideas of self-love and community service along with increasing student involvement.
First, I’d start with improving people’s self-worth. To get people to care more about others and the world around them, it’s important for them to first learn to care for themselves. To do this, I would regularly put up simple posters over the school, giving small compliments. A few of these posters could be whiteboards, filled with student-submitted niceties. A dry erase marker would always be nearby said whiteboard in order for people to be able to write anything that comes to mind. (The board would be checked regularly to prevent others from defacing the board with unwanted messages/images.) I’d also book ten to fifteen minutes at every school assembly to have a speaker (this could be anyone from students to well-known authors depending on who volunteers) give a speech about improving quality of life. I’d want these speeches to be about personal events that happened in each person’s life to let others who are struggling through similar situations know that they are not alone.
In addition to all these self-love measures, I’d create a group dedicated to community service in efforts to increase our caring for the community. In this group, we’d cooperate to find places within our community people would most want to volunteer. This could be anything from volunteering at the animal shelter to picking up trash around the school’s campus. Any effort would be considered. Of course, this type of organization may not appeal to everyone, so I’d want to give rewards to those who do come. Each community service event, we’d have a new prize for the individual who worked the most along with a lottery for a second place prize. This’ll make it so that everyone who comes gets a chance to win something, even if they can’t do much. These prizes would be small such as a five dollar gift card to Starbucks or a bag of candy or some other item. With cooperation from my school’s principal, we could give out larger, school-related prizes such as a free prom ticket or a free yearbook. To get more people involved in caring for our community, these prizes will be advertised before each time the group prepares to set out on another community service mission. My hope is that these will convince a large number of students who would traditionally be uninterested in community service to join our cause and stay as regulars.
Finally, I’d want to make sure that everyone’s ideas on the Caring Committee (which is what I’d be the Ambassador of) are heard. As the goal is to improve the school’s climate, I’d request that all students be given a small questionnaire regarding the Caring Committee’s performance. They could share their ideas on what prizes should be picked, how the Caring Committee could improve its outreach, and how the Caring Committee should change to improve the school’s environment.
These three changes in way of self-love, community service, and student involvement are what I believe would best help create a more caring environment at my school.