Part 1:
My 3 most important values are community, equality, and compassion. My 3 least important values are Tradition, responsibility, spiritual growth.
I agree with most of these values, but not all. I highly agree with my three most important values being community, equality, and compassion. I believe it is important to build strong connections with others and find people you feel valued with. Another big part of community is ensuring that everyone has an equal chance to achieve their greatest. This means that everyone should have equal rights. With this comes compassion, to believe everyone should be given the same opportunities means to feel compassion for people who don’t. I believe these three values correspond well to what I believe.
On the other hand, I believe with some of my least important values but not all. The values tradition, spiritual growth, and responsibility were my least important. I believe tradition is important in families and bonds them together, but in some cases, transitions must be questioned. An example of this is traditional general roles, they often limited women from making choices and pursuing a greater education. Because of this tradition, their opportunities were decreased. In cases like this I believe it is important to question whether the tradition is positively impacting societies. Lastly, I rated spiritual growth, the lower not because I valued the other statement more than this one. I prefer to focus on the impact I can make daily to my community rather than seeking a greater meaning or purpose in life.
I rated responsibility as one of my lowest, not because I think people shouldn’t have responsibilities but because of the statement. The statement stated that people should “voluntarily do what is expected of them.” I don’t think you should do a task because you were expected to do so. With responsibility a big part is doing so because you believe it is right. This is why responsibility ended up being one of the lower values in my list. Other than the statement for responsibility, I believe all the other statements matched the values well to the values.
Two values that I believe are high on my list but are missing in this chart are honesty and respect. Not only do I believe it is important to not lie, but a big part of honesty is to not only be honest to yourself, but also others. It is important to be true to yourself of who you are. Your interest and personality should reflect who you are, instead of trying to fit into a specific stereotype. I believe respect is also an important value because you should treat others the way you want to be treated. It is important to not only respect your elders, but everyone who you surround yourself with. It is important to respect other’s opinions, actions whether you agree with them or not.
To me my three values tell me to be a good person in society. To me community means to be connected and supported by people around you. This means to build connections and value others in order to spend time together. Equality means everyone gets the opportunities and resources. They need to reach their full potential regardless of their gender, religion and background. Compassion means to care about others not only your family members and friends, but also people who you may not know. This means showing kindness and understanding them which also connects with equality.
A time I put my value ‘community’ to use was when I began volunteering. When I started, I was nervous because I had never worked with these people before. My first time volunteering was in recreational programs. Going in I knew there would be children of different ages and instructors who I never met. As I became more familiar with the environment, I started bonding with not only the kids but also the different instructors I’d work with every week. This became a big part of my life, every few weeks sign up for different types of activities. As time went on I felt less nervous and felt more connected to my community. As a result, not only did volunteering in my community improve my social skills, but it allowed me to become friends with other volunteers who I worked with. Additionally, it brought me together with people who had similar passions as me like gymnastics and arts. It created important bonds and strengthened my relationships with people who I met through this opportunity.
For Community I could volunteer with the library to create programs to bring people of shared interests together. For equality I could create a free tutoring service with a group of friends to provide tutoring for kids who may not be able to access it due to financial reasons. For compassion if I noticed a new student is sitting alone at lunch, so I would invite them to sit with my friends and I to help them feel included and welcomed.
Part 2:
Out of all 17 sustainable development goals, the one that alliance with my values the most is good health and well-being. I believe this is important because everyone deserves a opportunity to live a healthy life and have access to the knowledge and resources to do so. My passion is also the third one which is a good health and well-being. I want to help children develop healthy habits from a young age. I believe teaching about healthy habits. Starting from a young age is important so they can continue to do so their whole life. A specific action I would like to do to address the school is to put together a presentation about healthy habits, regarding physical and mental health. I would like to present this to a group of kids either in elementary school classroom or at a library. By doing this, I will be able to address one of the United Nations sustainable goals. I will be able to teach children about physical and mental health such as coping mechanisms which can help them manage stress and build positive habits. Learning this will benefit them throughout their whole life.
