If you have no special plans for your break, why not give your time away?

    Don't listen to people who say that teenagers today are selfish. It's not true. Volunteering is becoming more and more popular in the United States. Millions of teenagers spend their school holidays helping others. And they do it for free. Here are some of their stories.

    Tina Anderson, 16

    I'm going to teach kids who have trouble reading. I'll work for a program called Reading for Life. Every day, I'm going to help kids choose and read books that interest them. I want to be a teacher and I love children and reading，so this is going to be a great experience for me.

    Alice White, 18

    I'm going to help the Green Plan build new hiking trails（小道）in the mountains of Idaho. It's going to be wonderful. I'll spend the whole summer living in a tent and breathing the clean mountain air. I'm getting a great workout at the same time.

    Jason Moore，20

    This summer, I'm going to volunteer with Home for Humans. They build good, low-cost houses and sell them to poor families. They've built 90,000 houses in 60 countries. They'll teach me what to do，so I'll help and also learn new skills.

    The Beijing Hearing Dog Association has a plan. They plan to choose some stray dogs（流浪狗） and train them. Then the dogs will be able to help the old and the deaf.

    They will choose young dogs, because it's easier to train them. The kind of dog is not important.

    Twenty-four volunteers will join the training. They all have some experience of keeping dogs and they all love dogs. They will learn a special language first from the coach（教练） and they teach the dogs. This training will take 180 days. Then the better-performed dogs will enter the next training. They will learn to understand different sounds, such as knocking on a door and water boiling. Then the dogs will live with the deaf or the old for 30 days.

    Some people think the plan won't work, because it will cost a lot of money.  But some people like the plan and they would like to be the volunteers.

    Joe was driving home on a road one evening. He just lost his job. It was winter and it was very cold, just like his feelings.

    An old lady with a car was standing on one side of the road. She needed help, but no one stopped to help her. Joe stopped in front of her and got out of the car. The old lady looked very worried. Even when he put a smile on his face, the lady still looked worried. Was he going to hurt her? He didn't look safe, and he looked poor and hungry.

    Joe knew how she felt. He said, "I'm here to help you, madam. Why don't you wait in my car? By the way, my name is Joe."

    The lady thought for a while and then went into his car. There was something wrong with her car. Joe went under her car to repair it. It took him a long time to repair the car. He got dirty and his hands hurt. Then the lady told him her name was Mercedes. She asked Joe how much she should pay for his help.

    Joe never thought about getting money. This wasn't a job to him. This was helping someone in need. He told her that if she really wanted to pay him back, the next time she saw someone who needed help, she could give that person help.

—Yes, I'm looking for a red hat.