Hawaii Teenager Recycles for Charity

Posted on August 4, 2021 by Jeff Perry

This Hawaii teenager recycles for charity.

Thirteen-year-old Genshu Price was recycling bottles and cans to save for his college education. He was so successful that he decided to expand his recycling to help others, Hawaii News Now reports.

“After a while we figured that we could branch it off and make it for other students. That way it can be bigger,” he said. “It could help so many people.” He started collecting even more bottles and cans, even preemptively asking people visiting Oahu’s sunny beaches if they were done with their drinks.

Since he started, he and his family have collected more than 100,000 recyclables. Mainstream news outlets have shared his story all over the country. Businesses and schools have chipped in by setting up recycle bins to collect cans for Price’s project.

The most bottles and cans have come from Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii’s cleanups, and from his drop-off depots at King Intermediate, Mililani Uka Elementary, Kualoa Ranch, and other spots. “Within those six months we’ve recycled at least 5,000 pounds,” Genshu said.

The charity, spearheaded by Price, has been officially organized as Bottles 4 College. Their goal is to “create a system where we are collecting at least 2-4 million recyclable cans and bottles annually in order to be able to fund college tuition scholarships for 1-2 Hawaii students annually.”

That’s an ambitious goal, since for academic year 2020-2021, the average tuition & fees for colleges in Hawaii is $5,020 for in-state students and $18,621 for out-of-state students. But the example of Genshu Price and his family shows that voluntary charity can make a real difference in people’s lives. It’s something that we know and live by at Voluntaryism In Action, and as this Hawaii teenager recycles for charity he shows that people can help each other without the force of the government.

Unschooling and Voluntaryism

Posted on April 3, 2021 by Sarah Perry

It’s safe to say that people in the liberty movement are fans of alternate school choices—the farther distance from government involvement the better. Private schools may be a good fit for some families, but they are still subject to the same government standards as public schools. Charter schools have this same requirement in most regions, but are an appealing option because they give you funding for your educational needs. While this funding does come from the government through the charter, one could easily view it as a personal tax rebate. Although charters do give you a bit more freedom of choice than public or private schools, the option that is most customizable is homeschooling. (Look up your local homeschool laws here.) Unschooling and voluntaryism are a perfect match. Unschooling—one of the many ways to homeschool—is most in line with voluntaryist philosophy and will help you teach your children by personal example how to live a life fully rooted in consent-based interactions.

Just as consent is central to voluntaryist philosophy, the same is true of unschooling. Unschooling is interest-based and child-led. While not being permissive or neglectful, parents allow their children the freedom to decide what to study and when. Subjects are learned holistically instead of being artificially separated. Emphasis is placed on helping children develop a lifelong love of learning by making it a natural, unforced part of the family culture. For example, simply by reading aloud to your children often and keeping plenty of interesting reading material handy, children even learn how to read on their own—no phonics books, no sight-word drills, no setting timers for forced daily reading practice. Instead, they get the satisfaction of accomplishing this themselves and the natural pleasure derived from reading what you like when you like.

Reading is perhaps the most common educational concern parents have for their children no matter what method of schooling they choose. Because of the very strict government expectations for reading levels at government schools, many parents struggle with the thought of giving their children this much freedom. It is my belief, however, that following the government’s lead on when and how to teach reading—the way most parents are now used to being the one and only process—poses far greater risks. When children are forced to learn something, they naturally resist, and it could cause an early and lasting dislike for reading. Additionally, government schools tend to push reading earlier than when many children have the brain development needed for decoding the printed word—again, causing unnecessary frustration for parents and children alike. This earlier push for reading also encroaches on children’s free play time, which is the best and easiest way for children to learn many things and should be tampered with as little as possible. In this way, the unschooling way of learning how to read follows the child’s natural course of development.

In John Holt’s famous work How Children Learn, he was one of the first teachers to study the natural language development in children from infancy. He makes the connection that if spoken language were broken down into bits and taught to children in the same way that reading is, a natural process would become an extremely difficult one. He hypothesized that if reading were allowed to be learned holistically the same way children learn how to speak, the process would be far easier and more rewarding for children. He also observed that children are naturally self-correcting, so if parents will take a step back and allow them more freedom to make mistakes on their journey to literacy, they will be able to manage most of the difficulties on their own. More recent studies have shown that whether a child is an early reader or later reader (even up to age 14 being in the normal range) makes no difference in their overall proficiency.

The next most common concern parents have with unschooling is that their children won’t choose to learn what the parents want them to learn, or what parents think they need to learn. As Connor Boyack explains in his book Passion-Driven Education, not all children need to learn the same things. In this book he offers great ideas for changing your expectations, thinking outside the box of standardized government schooling, and making life an educational journey. Children develop in different ways at different times from each other, making it futile to standardize their educational experiences. Even within the same families, what works for one child may not necessarily work for their siblings.

If voluntaryist philosophy is important to your family, unschooling your children is the best way to live those values consistently. By giving your children appropriate freedom of choice and becoming their educational facilitators instead of their masters, you demonstrate to them that consent is important in all facets of life and in every kind of relationship—not just our relationship to government. And speaking of government, what better way to put more distance between their constant interference and your family?

VIA is assisting low-income families with homeschooling resources and supplies—please click here to apply or to donate to this cause!

September-October 2020 Organizational Update

Posted on November 1, 2020 by Sarah Perry

Voluntaryism in Action continues to grow! This autumn saw us adding more team members to our ranks: Steve Williams–our new multimedia expert, and Amanda Strong—our new administrative assistant. Steve will be helping us produce more educational and informational content to reach more people with the message of voluntaryism, and Amanda will help our overall efficiency.

Our summertime campaigns were big successes! Below is a brief summary of them and some other things we’re currently working on.

With the over $5,000 raised from our homeschooling and distance-learning education campaign, we directly supplied 69 students in the United States to help them get the most out of their education in difficult circumstances.
We also sent cryptocurrency to Kids Compassion Charity in Freetown, Sierra Leone to pay for school supplies for rural needy children.
Our essay contest for a higher education grant is set to close on October 31 with the winner to be announced in the coming weeks.
We raised over $10,000 for our “Free our Children” campaign to fight child sex trafficking which we granted to organizations who are specially equipped and trained to rescue victims and provide necessary aftercare: Operation Underground Railroad and The Demand Project.
An important milestone we hit this fall was being awarded our first grant! The Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) granted VIA $4,500 to directly assist homeschooling families with educational expenses. We will be rolling out this program in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!
VIA just launched our second annual holiday food drive, and we’ve already surpassed our goal from last year! We will be using these funds to help feed needy families and supply food banks during their busiest season.
VIA’s podcast, “A Voluntary View,” is now available on multiple platforms, including Spotify, RadioPublic, and Google Podcasts.

Our donors are what make all of these projects possible, and we can’t thank you enough for your support! Great things are in our future, and we’re excited for you to be a part of this with us.

July 2020 Organizational Update

Posted on August 13, 2020 by Sam Wade

We went into the second half of the year with a bang with ongoing COVID-19 relief projects as well as more opportunity for personal outreach. Entering the new month, for the first time, VIA is managing dual active fundraisers. Here’s our progress from the past month:

● Your donations to our relief project to assist small businesses affected by the riots helped: Emily’s Eatery, Midori’s Floating World Café, Coco & Family Beauty Supply, Lake Street Stop n’ Shop, and Top Cut Comics. Read more about it here: https://viaction.org/wire/updates/rebuilding-small-businesses

● Launched the fundraiser for COVID Relief for Low Income Students, assisting families who are continuing education from home or distance learning. To support the cause, donate here: https://viaction.org/educate

● In VIA Community, we began releasing homeschooling tips to assist families who are either seasoned homeschoolers or new and forced into it because of school closures. If you’re not yet a part of the VIA family, find our Facebook group: VIA Community

● Assistant Director Justin Glassman and Content Creator Sam Wade assisted a local ‘Strengthen Your Community’ event, giving hygiene kits and snacks to the homeless in Macon, GA, funded by your donations to our fundraiser: Self-Sufficiency Resources for the Needy.

● Launched nationwide volunteer program to send care packages to the homeless across America, again utilizing remaining funds from Self-Sufficiency Resources for the Homeless as well as accepting ongoing funds at viaction.org/ to continue to support the project. Donations can be made here: https://viaction.org/causes/community-development

● In response to the spotlight on human trafficking, we commenced a second fundraiser, Free Our Children: Fight Child Sex Trafficking. If you’d like to support through VIA, donate here: https://viaction.org/freeourchildren

● We jumpstarted our podcast A Voluntary View With VIA on YouTube and LBRY.tv

● We are working with a volunteer grantwriting consultant to start our grantwriting process.

● We invested more capital in our IT department to become more efficient.

As we look to the future, our team hopes to continue to stand for our mission as we respond to government’s failure to act in crisis and certainty with a voluntary helping hand. To our continued donors and supporters, thank you for making this all possible.

Voluntaryism in Action

Focusing on Voluntary and Free Market Solutions

Tag Archives: education

Hawaii Teenager Recycles for Charity

Unschooling and Voluntaryism

September-October 2020 Organizational Update

July 2020 Organizational Update