Why School Service Projects Are A Great Idea
You already know that you have to pay a lot of attention to academics when in high school, and you’d have been encouraged to join extracurricular programs too. A service project is a volunteer effort focused on addressing specific issue in your community. Signing up for high school service projects is an excellent idea – read on to learn more.
Here’s why we recommend all students get involved in school service projects.
Know The Real World
Between social media and the bubble that is your own school, you may not have an understanding of the problems people face out in the world. A community project brings you face-to-face with real people dealing with real issues and helps you examine yourself, your values and what’s really important.
Whether you’re helping the environment, or young kids, or the elderly or the ill, you learn first hand about the challenges communities have to deal with and you also learn how they can be solved. These kinds of experiences may even help you in deciding your future career!
Develop People Skills
Connecting to the community through a school service project brings you in touch with many different people, from those who organize and run these services, to those who’re helped by the services and others like you who are helping deliver the services. Networking with professionals and making new friends
This benefits you in a couple of ways. First, you develop compassion and empathy, traits that will make you a kinder, more caring person as you go through life. Second, you learn interpersonal skills when dealing with a variety of people, not just the ones you see at school. And, you have a chance to develop leadership skills as you work with a team to help solve problems.
Prep For College and Career
We’ve mentioned this before – showing an interest in helping others will make a positive impression on college admissions officers. Colleges are keen on recruiting students who care about other people, whether it’s in their local communities, or at a national or even global level. Involvement in service projects, especially if you do it for an extended period of time, definitely shows that you truly care.
Your experience in school service projects will make a different when you apply for jobs too. Employers favor candidates who’ve shown a consistent interest in being involved in helping the community. They know that it shows good teamwork and leadership skills. So volunteering now helps your future efforts!
Feel Good!
This is the best part. Helping others can actually help you. It makes you feel good to know that you’ve made a positive difference to someone and their life is a little better because of you!
Most of the service projects are set up in such a way that you can immediately see the results of your work: feeding someone in a soup kitchen, helping little kids learn to read, cleaning up a park etc. So unlike long term efforts (like going through four years of high school for example!), you can see tangible results of your actions pretty quickly. This gives you a feeling of accomplishment and success pretty much every time you volunteer!
Service projects are not only another choice for an extracurricular activity, they can also better prepare you for college, career and life in general. And to top it off, they give you a chance to do good and feel good – which gives you a great reason to join one, don’t you agree?