&gt;It also seems that we should each take some personal responsibility, and help whomever we can. It is too often that we pawn off our responsibilities and moral duties on society.&lt;<p>So very true...the single most important thing a person can do to strengthen a community--interpret community as broadly as you like--is to spend time helping those in your immediate vicinity...I&#x27;m prescribing this because of it&#x27;s accessibility; it&#x27;s a course of action available to anyone, usually costs little, and leaves you feeling pretty darned good...<p>First-hand case in point:  A boy who lives a couple of miles away from me started dropping by occasionally to visit...he&#x27;d pedal by on his bicycle and stop to chat if I was out in the yard...<p>During our visits I learned about his circumstances...his father, a drug user, committed suicide in the shower of their home when he was 6 years old...his mother had had a series of boyfriends, and there were 3 partial families--14 people--living in his house, a 3 bedroom trailer...<p>As we got to know each other a bit better he asked me one day,&quot;Hey, everyone around here calls you the computer man; how could I learn about computers?&quot;<p>I told him I could teach him a few things, and did...he would drop by when my schedule permitted and was willing to sit for as long I was willing to teach him things...just basics, a few tricks...<p>I could tell that he had a quick grasp of the material, and asked him how school was going, his grades, etc...turned out he had around a 3.7 GPA, and admitted that he never studied outside of school...<p>I told him one day that he should consider college...the next day he said he had mentioned what I said to his mom and she flatly told him,&quot;We can&#x27;t afford something like that&quot;.<p>To make a long story short, the state that I live in offers a program that essentially pays (combined with grants, and college scholarships) for those below a certain income level to attend 5 years of in-state college...I spent several days gathering information, presented it to him, and told him I thought he could do it...he just needed to sign up in the program right away, and keep his grades up...<p>Rather predictably, his mother was initially skeptical, so at his invitation I visited with her and explained how this would work...<p>I&#x27;ll leave the story here...he&#x27;s a junior in high school now and is on track to enter college in 2017...he would have never become aware of the opportunity if I hadn&#x27;t mentioned it to him, and all it cost me was about 2 days of research and another day helping him apply... we&#x27;ll see how it goes...