In order to get the IB diploma, we had to do a total of 200 community service hours, 100 of which had to be in a dedicated project.

i LOVE that requirement being towards a DEDICATED project.

My county has a service requirement now. back in the old millenium when i graduated, i don't think they had it. however, i did a major amount of service through church, kitty hawk (AFJROTC honor society), and sga.

question:

i sit on a couple of scholarship review panels and all the awards require community service. since all the school local districts MANDATE kids complete X number of hours, i don't give points for doing the minimum. I give points for longevity and whether or not someone from the place they claimed they've done 40 million hours of service writes them a rec.

i feel like the kid who has volunteered consistently over a year or so at one place is more dedicated than the kid who volunteers somewhere different every saturday AND lists ALLLLLLLLL of those places on an application. I've gotten into heated debate with the rest of the panel about this.

do you guys have thoughts about this?

I think you're right on.

However, the rules of the committee need to be officially changed to reflect the times. Or at least to reflect the quality of the service and not the quantity.

I absolutely agree. In my case, 200 hours over 4 years is nothing--that ends up being roughly 2 hours a week when school's in session (I ended up having more than 150 hours just for my mentoring project). By taking on a dedicated project, you get to know the people at the organization, which means that they know you and your work really well.

You can't reward people for doing just the minimum.

I had to do 100 hrs, and you couldn't spend less than 20 hrs/project.

I was the director of the liturgy choir for my service hours.

great point!

Most public districts in Florida do not require community service, although it is required by the state in order to receive the Bright Futures Scholarship! Because this scholarship funds 75-100% of tuition at public universities and colleges, student applying for the scholarship have to have at least 75 hours.

It was 100 hours for me a few years ago, though i know I had way more than that!

after i "graduated" from elementary school i went to catholic school that was 7-12 grade and we had to complete a minimum of 20 hours a year which resulted in 120 hours before graduation (only the hours you accumulated in high school were sent off with transcripts) My junior year they added 6th grade to the middle school and bumped up the community service to 30 hours a year with 180 hours before graduation.

They also had rules for the service hours as well. The big rule was that all of your hours could not be at one place (i.e. if you helped out with basketball camp at school you would get 30 something hours but only 10 would count for your 20 or 15 for your 30.. you could also only count a certain number of hours you accumulated at your church for service hours as well *same thing only 10 would count even if you got 20 hrs there*

Really confusing, I know but it's easy once you get used to the system.

We had to participate in a Sophomore Service Project. Basically you chose one group to work with and you did community service with them for the year. Each organization had different requirements so it wasn't a set number of hours. I did my project with a group called Phone Friend, which was an afterschool help line for latch-key children. We read stories, told jokes, and were a friendly voice if a kid was home alone and scared.

At the end of the year we had to write a term paper on our experiences. We weren't required to continue working with our groups, but most people did.