In order to graduate from Brewster High School, every student needs at least twenty hours of community service. While this may seem like an easy task to accomplish, if you don’t have the time, are at a standstill for ideas, or want to be an overachiever and get more than twenty hours of community service quickly, here are some ideas that can help you.
Join/ Get More Involved With Clubs
The main and arguably most efficient way of getting more community service hours is through different clubs at our school. Doing different activities for clubs can add up quickly in community service hours. You don’t have to join twenty different clubs in order to get a lot, but joining clubs that often give out community service opportunities, like any of the honor societies or clubs that tend to host many bake sales or events, (for example, Model UN or S.A.L.T.Y. Hands) can definitely help contribute to getting hours. When participating in these clubs, the key to getting the most hours with them is to do everything that is offered. If there is a bake sale going on and you can get an hour for running the table and bringing something in, do both if you can. This way, you can technically earn double the amount of service hours you would normally receive if you choose to undertake both opportunities.
Find Service Opportunities the School Offers
Though this does sound similar to what I said earlier, this way of getting community service hours involves finding opportunities within the school as opposed to within your club. The morning announcement emails tend to have some options to choose from to earn credit for community service, like tutoring positions for math or other subjects. You can also ask around for different opportunities; your teachers may have some ideas that could get you hours, or they may know something that’s going on in school that could count as community service. They may also be able to give you something to do, which could count as community service as well.
Help the Community Outside of School
If you have the time and are willing to go the extra mile, try to find organizations outside of school that host events where you can volunteer at and help out with. Though sometimes they can require a little more participation and involvement compared to a school club, they are still a great way to gain plenty of hours that will cover the twenty-hour requirement and even exceed it in most cases. Some examples of these are the Teen Leadership Council at the Patterson Library, 4-H Putnam County, or Putnam CAP. All of these institutions tend to host many different events or charities that can get you at least two hours of community service per event. Another way is to find something you like to do and turn it into a community service project. For example, if you like working with animals, volunteer at a local animal shelter like the Putnam Humane Society. You don’t have to be there 24/7, but helping out once or twice a week for a couple hours can definitely help with earning hours.
Count Everything
For some people, they may have already met and possibly surpassed the community service requirement without even knowing it. Make sure to count everything you do (that doesn’t involve you getting paid) as community service. If you helped run a bake sale for your sports team, either involved or not involved with the school, log it as community service. If you tutored a family member or a friend outside of school, log it as community service. There are so many things that everyone does both inside and outside of school that can count as service hours; we just have to make sure we log them so we can get credit for them.
Hopefully, these methods of getting those service hours before graduation are effective and make the task easier. Earning hours can be easy, but these ways of getting them should make the process even easier.
