<p>That it makes kids feel good is not a valid reason to ask them to do community service. Their service should effectively and efficiently accomplish a goal. It is this feel-good thinking which engenders expensive foreign service trips and missions projects that could be accomplished better and cheaper by paying locals to do the work. But no, we send a group of wide-eyed American teenagers with no construction experience to build houses in Mexico. We pay for plane fare, “safe” food, and “safe” housing for them when those expenses wouldn’t be necessary if we hired locally.</p>