Are you kidding? Sidwell and GDS (for all their talk about community service) only ask for 15 hours per yr of HS?

The Sidwell and GDS requirements to approve a service project are ridiculous.

Anonymous wrote:Talk about lame.

Two hours per month for eight months is not a big ask. Everyone is busy. Everyone has priorities. Making time to help poor people should be one of them.

Some people walk their talk.

It's not that helping people for 2 hours per month is a big ask. It obviously is not. But those 2 hours need to be approved and accounted for, and done for a specific type of organization, and blah blah blah and then it just turns into an administrative exercise, when in fact, teens could easily be out in the community doing any number of helpful things, but they aren't, since they don't "count."

Talk about lame.

Two hours per month for eight months is not a big ask. Everyone is busy. Everyone has priorities. Making time to help poor people should be one of them.

Some people walk their talk.

I think volunteering totally overdone on college apps. Current options for high schoolers are lame, because of too many kids fulfilling hours. Id love for schools to get rid of this requirement.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Actually, 15 hours can be difficult on some families. We have to get the hours approved and there are certain things that may not be accepted. For example, DC could not use there hours pulling weeds with a local teen volunteer organization. They also could not use the hours handing out water during a race. It had to be helping community in need. Many of these are on weekends and rely on parents to be there also. They also are usually only 2-3 hours at a time, so require multiple trips.
We do much more than 15 hours, but the specifics with 3 DCs, make it a challenge, a worthwhile challenge, but a challenge.

Seriously? Your family cannot figure out how to put in 45 hours of community service to poor people over the course of an entire year?

+1

Can "we" figure it out? Yes, as a parent, I am capable of doing the legwork to find volunteering opportunities for my kids. Could they do it by themselves? Maybe, but until they're driving, it's probably going to be something that requires my involvement in terms of getting them to and from a location, and for a lot of places, volunteering WITH them if they aren't old enough to volunteer themselves. And I have other kids, and a job, and just honestly other stuff I'm dealing with, and adding volunteering to my plate isn't something that I love.

Schools that include it in their school day/after school/weekend activities are doing it right, in my opinion.