Your Community Wants YOU!

Written by Hannah McGechie & Stéphanie C. Houle on 10/10/07

If I say “community service,” you think of people in orange jumpsuits picking up trash along the highway. While a court order is one reason to do some volunteer work, there are a multitude of others with varying benefits. There are also many different ways in which one can serve his or her community, allowing volunteers to tailor their work around their interests and schedules.

One good reason for high school students to do community service is that in many provinces, a certain number of community service hours are required before students can graduate. The aim of this requirement is to encourage students to have an investment in their communities and learn how good altruism (selflessly working for the benefit of others) can feel. The minimum number of hours and activities that qualify as community service are determined by the province; to find out what the requirements are for you, visit your province’s Ministry of Education website. Volunteer work can also literally pay off: there are many scholarships which are awarded based primarily on candidates’ community involvement.

Photo by YoungToymake on Flickr

Volunteering is also an excellent way to get out of the vicious “need experience to get a job but need a job to get experience” cycle. Depending on what type of volunteer work you do, the skills you learn can be as specific as how to operate a cash register or as general as effectively working in a group. Volunteering at a day care will give you experience working with children, instructing Sunday school will allow you to experience teaching, and helping set up for an outdoor music festival will introduce you to event planning and the joys of battling Mother Nature on a tight schedule. By volunteering in settings which are similar to those in which you want to work in the future, you will also be able to see if you are comfortable in and enjoy that particular type of work. For example, your dream job at this point might be an emergency room doctor, but in the course of your volunteer work in a hospital, you may discover that the mere mention of blood makes you queasy and lightheaded. Volunteer work allows you to discover this before you spend thousands of dollars and many years of your life in medical school.

Ways to Serve the Community

Volunteer with an Established Agency
If you are interested in doing straightforward volunteer work for a couple hours a week, apply to local hospitals, libraries, soup kitchens or your city’s Humane Society. These organizations typically depend heavily on community support and have established programs and positions for volunteers. Do a little bit of background research first and choose an agency that has a mission with which you really agree.

Start Your Own Chapter of an Established Agency
So you’ve found a cause about which you are particularly passionate (equal rights for children, let’s say), but the closest agency that supports this cause is in the next province. You could always open your own chapter of the agency: this practice is already established in many organizations, and all you have to do is contact them to find out how their particular system works. Some chapters are created to work towards a one-time event, such as Meal Exchange’s Trick or Eat Program. Every year, each chapter of this program organizes volunteers who collect non-perishable food items instead of Halloween candy, and the collected food items are donated to local social service agencies. Other chapters work year-round to raise awareness and funds for their chosen cause. For example, each province has an organization for students to battle impaired driving (Ontario Students Against Impaired Driving, Alberta Students Against Drunk Driving, etc.) and all the chapters of these organizations can register to participate in Canada ’s National Students Against Impaired and Distracted Driving Day.

Start Your Own Volunteer Project
If there is no organization supporting your chosen cause, create your own project! This can be as simple as getting a group of friends together to knit baby blankets for the premature babies born at a local hospital or organizing a benefit concert to raise money to donate to your school’s library. Talk to other fundraisers and leaders in your community to get ideas about how you can start your own project and to see if they have any useful contacts for you. Remember, all community groups and charitable organizations, from Mothers Against Drunk Driving to UNICEF, started as one person’s idea and came into being through their determination and hard work.

Volunteer Abroad
If you want to volunteer overseas and have more time to commit (anything from a couple weeks to several months), apply to an organization such as Canada World Youth or Youth Challenge International. With these agencies, you can travel to various countries around the world and participate in programs ranging from providing AIDS education to helping build schools. Check out the article Jungle Summer in deal.org’s September issue to read about the overseas volunteering experience of one of our staff members.

Links

Volunteers Bénévoles Canada
Volunteer Abroad
Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation