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Getting teens involved with and committed to volunteer work
How do you get other teens involved with and committed to service projects? It seems that the majority of teens today can't be bothered or are simply too busy to apply themselves to any cause that isn't within their scope of interests--and most often service and volunteer work comes last on their list of priorities that include socialization, gaming, and/or studying.
Getting teens to spread the word and bring friends to help volunteer helps somewhat, but even then, this strategy doesn't yield great results. Help?
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Maybe give some free advice about: Activism?
We have a club at our school, that you can do service hours and it looks good for college. So, a lot of teens do it for that.
If you are still in school or are a teacher, I think a great way to help them get involved is to educate them. Like with morning annoucements put a video up of whatever thing you want to help. a lot of teens/kids don't probably realize what is really going on in the world. i know i didn't until this year. (& i am 17 years old.) i knew countries were poor & don't have a lot but i still thought they all had electricity and stuff. i now realize, they don't. & i've really tried to spread the word and donate now that i know. :) it's not that i didn't care, i just didn't know.
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Try a punishment-reward system. Although it's a bit primitive and the teens may hate you for it, it does work. My high school requires ten hours of service every year in order to graduate, and even with the handful of kids that fake it, that's a whole lot of service hours. Colleges love community service, and sometimes you can get scholarship money out of it in the end.
Help them find a type of community service that they enjoy. Some teens prefer serving food, some prefer picking up trash, some prefer repainting houses. Get them to do it with their friends!
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Are you a parent looking to motivate your teens?
Well, maybe offer some incentive. Like, if you all go volunteer with me for [whatever the job is], for [however long], then we'll go out for dinner, or do something else you like.
If you're a teen looking to motivate your friends, you could use the same principle. Like, "Hey guys! Let's go volunteer for this, and then maybe we can go to a movie or something after!"
I don't know, you can't really force someone to do volunteer work. I mean, me personally, I LOVE to volunteer, and I'm always doing it, but others are really self-centered and only worried about TV, the internet, or whatever.
Maybe tell people that volunteer work looks AMAZING on college applications and scholarship applications. If that doesn't motivate them, or if food/movies don't motivate them, not much will.
--Jack
(17/m)
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