Push young people into the landfill

In the past, I used to slander my friend - the Youth Union Secretary at his office was the Secretary of the Street Sweeping Union. Every time I called him to invite him out on the weekend, he always made up the excuse that he was busy with the Union's work. After he refused many times, I also became suspicious. One day, I drove past the office gate and saw him sweeping the yard and pulling weeds with his butt up.

I once asked him: Why do you keep pushing the Youth Union members into the garbage dump? There are plenty of other things to do, if not social activities then do business, raise funds and hire sanitation workers. So it was killing two birds with one stone: gathering the youth force and creating more income for workers. After listening, he kept quiet and said nothing, and I was happy because I felt like what I said was so right. But these days, when the movement to clean up trash in the places you go to has become popular online, with the participants being famous youtubers in the world and most of them being young people, I felt like I was a bit wrong.

The aforementioned trash cleaning challenge has come to Vietnam, but the participants are not Vietnamese YouTubers. They are young foreigners, some of whom even "criticized" that "they tricked me into coming to Vietnam to travel, but unexpectedly I was pushed into a trash dump like this." After saying that, the foreign guy was busy collecting trash and laughing happily as if it was just a funny joke. I looked at those images and wondered, if I were in the same situation as him, what would I do? Turn my back and leave my silly friends wading in the trash dump, just looking at it makes me sick, or not hesitate to help clean up a trash dump that is not mine?

My problem, and that of many young people, and of many other not-so-young people, is that we only take responsibility for what we cause, or what is directly related to our own interests. Sometimes we avoid even the responsibilities that belong to us. Very often, we turn a blind eye because “it’s not our problem”, “someone else will do it”. But who is that someone else, if we all wait for someone else to take responsibility. Anyone is fine, as long as it’s not us.

Perhaps that is the time when the Youth Union is needed, because isn't the motto of the Youth Union "Where there is a need, there is youth, where there is difficulty, there is youth"? Because isn't the reason for the existence of the Youth Union to train young people to live responsibly towards themselves and towards society? As long as environmental pollution is still a social problem, young people will still need to jump into the garbage dump. But it would be better if we could awaken the conscience and responsibility that is perhaps dormant in the community. So that not only the youth but also the whole society can jump into the garbage dump. So that we only have to jump in there once. If we jump and then jump again, jumping forever, it will be tiring...