Saturday, July 31, 2010

Saturday Service: Getting in your junior high and high school volunteer hours

There is a service requirement that goes along with many local junior high and high schools as part of their graduation requirements. I know this is the case in other areas as well, and since we go back to school in about a week and a half here, I thought I would throw out a few ideas of service for the kids to do for their service requirement. Here are some of the thing I thought of:
  • Look around your neighborhood for people that might need help-can you mow a lawn, watch a neighbors kids, help clean a house? If you see a need, offer to help fill it (for free). 
  • Ask local schools if they need any help with their activities-ask at your school (they likely have lists of things going on you can volunteer for) or contact local elementary schools and ask what they have you could volunteer for. I am PTO president at my kids' school and we always use kids to help run things like our carnival and other activities-it helps us get enough volunteers and helps the kids get their hours in.
  • Check at local churches for volunteer opportunities.
  • Talk to local charitable organizations (Red Cross, JDRF, etc) and see what volunteer opportunities they may have.
  • Local theaters often need volunteers to act as ushers.
There are so many places you can help if you just look around and find them. And let's be honest, who is going to turn away FREE help? Offer to serve people and they are likely to accept. Now I must admit here that I am one of those people that has a hard time accepting help, but when a kid in my neighborhood called and said "I need to get some volunteer service hours in for school within the next month, could I come help you clean around the house or watch your kids sometime?"  I let her come help out!

What other ways can these kids find volunteer opportunities?  Please leave comments if you have more ideas.


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