Oct 25, 2021

Highschool Volunteer Hours - A General Guide

For many students, Grade 9 is a culture shock unlike any they’ve experienced before.

Unless they’ve had some pretty big shifts in life, the shake-up in how school life is structured can be pretty disorienting. Luckily, high school’s realize this! They host open houses, pair freshmen up with seniors to act as mentors- and there is a truly impressive abundance of high school coming of age movies to offer saccharine but at least 38% accurate depictions of student life. Before starting this next educational step in one’s journey, the natural thing to do is to seek out advice!

As a senior high school student who can recount their own experience and that of their peers, I say that of all the tips you can sponge up as a freshman, sponge up this one: get a head start and know how to get your volunteer hours. Doing them on time, or at the least, not doing them at the last minute, will save you a lot of stress, time and missed opportunities.

Now if you’re reading this blog, you’re likely either a tutor, a tutee or a tutee parent. You may have already gotten your hours or are still in elementary school! But there’s still a chance that you fit into one of these categories:

1. You’re a senior scrambling to get your hours

2. You’re in grades 10 or 11, unbothered because "you’ll just do them next year" (don't do that, do them NOW!)

3. You’ve just started high school

4. You had a way to get hours, but with the pandemic and closures, you were unable to follow through with them

If you're a part of one of these categories, you can find below information on volunteer hours, how to get them at school, outside of school, through youth organizations and the importance of choosing programs and volunteer initiatives that will benefit you. In short, go through this guide!

What are Volunteer Hours?

Volunteer hours are hours you spend contributing to the improvement of your community through an outlet that has been approved by your school. You’ll need a certain number of them to receive your high school diploma. In Ontario, the requirement used to be 40h, but with select school boards it’s since been changed to 20h due to the closures and restricted opportunities brought on by the pandemic. Check with your school specifically to make sure you know how many hours you have to complete. What constitutes an approved outlet is one that fits the following criteria:

You as the volunteer are doing work that you would NOT otherwise be paid a salary for
Your volunteer employer is not a family member
Your school is able to contact your hours provider to confirm your completion of logged hours, and they’re able to obtain their signature
Additional requirements and VH info within Ontario Volunteering in Ontario | ontario.ca

Getting Hours at School

To make matters as equitable as possible, high schools offer many internal clubs that in turn offer up volunteer opportunities. Whether this be a student board that hosts after-school events, a volley-ball team that needs time keepers for games, or a Best Buddies program, make sure to explore what your school has. You should have the chance to do so at a club showcase or a club crawl. Schools are open and while clubs were stopped for a while, they're back! They may be less interactive than before, but they remain at your disposal. Don't hesitate or put off joining one!

Some tips for when choosing to complete VH this way:

Choose a club that actually interests you.

Some volunteering opportunities, like being a parent greeter at an open house are pretty tedious and don’t require a lot of passion. But others are quite the opposite. Clubs like Best Buddies (a social program where students with exceptionalities are matched with other high school students) thrive when participants are enthusiastic, committed and involved. If it were to be filled with uninterested students just dredging through, doing the bare minimum, it’d have no soul and would fail the buddies that actually depend on it! When it matters, don’t commit to a club you have no interest in actively participating in.

Follow through.

Make sure you stay committed to the club to actually get your hours by the end of your high school stint. Teachers have to sign off on your completion of events and have to vouch for any other way you’ve obtained your hours. If you drop the club after one month, one event or one meeting, you won’t have had the chance to network or build up trust or a good working relationship with them. Even if you worked 7h in a 20h season and then decided to quit the club before securing your hours, you can most likely wave them goodbye.

Keep your signed volunteer sheets organized! Especially if you have physical copies.

Getting Hours Outside of School

Outside of school, you’ve essentially got three volunteering options which will probably be your best bets.

You can volunteer for:

The city
An extracurricular you’re apart of
A nonprofit or a youth nonprofit (best online option)

The city has one of the most organized and accommodating volunteering hubs on offer. It makes sense, as a strong supportive community needs citizen help to maintain itself. With the city, you’ll find options like portering (wheeling around wheelchairs) in a rehab center, working at call centers or providing tutoring in exchange for hours. Such opportunities add to your resume and can support your efforts in pursuing a certain career or path, both in experience and on paper for possible employers or academic institutions to see. If you want to be a French teacher, you can reference your tutoring through community services. If you want to be a cook you can reference your thanksgiving homeless shelter meal prep.

Here’s a fantastic website for Toronto: Volunteer Toronto. For other locations, simply search up the words: volunteering + your desired city/country/region name.

Volunteering for an extracurricular you participate in is great because you as an individual are already established. You’re likely interested in the extracurricular, have the necessary knowledge to do case-specific volunteer work, and don’t have to compete with others to get the job. This could include being a lane-timer at a swim meet, a theatre assistant for the kiddie class at your weekend drama school, or a referee at your club’s internal soccer games.

A nonprofit that requires a substantial amount of skill is one of the more deeply impactful opportunities you can choose to take part in. Like maybe being an editor, logistics officer or apart of the executive team for a youth-run tutoring organization! ;)

Here, your choice in organization really matters on paper as it shows which realms you’re interested in and capable of devoting your community contributions to. It also goes without saying that when planning to join a volunteering position as serious and selfless as a nonprofit, you should be genuinely committed and maintain the responsibility expected of you.

One of the biggest perks of YRNPs is that many of them are run fully online, with executive team members being located all across the globe. If you apply on time and you get your school's approval, you could complete all your hours from the comfort of your home!

Relatedly, IntegraYouth is currently looking for tutors in all subjects! You can share our Instagram posts and website with any stressed friends that haven't been able to find online tutoring initiatives with the onset of the pandemic!

A good way to research youth-run nonprofits (YRNP) is by simply looking through a YRNP's Instagram followers! An odd way to research- I know! But in the very supportive international YRNP community, different organizations tend to grow their pages by doing shoutout for shoutout or follow for follow tactics. This wway, they make up a large chunk of their own followers. In no time, you'll find some organizations whose mission statements you resonate with, and whose job opportunities you'd be interested in applying to.

See here some of the many other Youth-Run Non-Profits that follow Integra!

Note that if your volunteering journey ends up being a little different to what’s originally expected, don’t panic! Just double check with your guidance office that your route is an acceptable one. This double checking very much applies when you’re volunteering through a youth-run nonprofit, as the minors doling out the hours to other minors need to be assessed and approved by your specific school. Just because one district accepts a youth org doesn’t necessarily mean that all others in the province or state will.

End Notes

In virtually all cases, do not approach volunteering opportunities scheming and plotting about what they can do for you, instead consider what you can do with them! Our hours are meant to be a way for us to connect with the community and gain real-world experience. Why pass up the life lessons that could be in store for you?

Written by: Emma