Guidelines for community service

A colleague suggested writing an article for one of the international school newspapers, such as TIE or Newslinks, regarding community service strategies at our school. I have been involved in defining global citizenship and community service as well as find practical means of measurement at my school. Here's my rough draft:

The connection between education and service has grown into a number of manifestations in our schools. In the U.S., this area has grown from the intellectual ideas of William James, John Dewey, and other philosophers’ views of education around 1905. More recently, the idea of serving others through schools has spread around the world and has been embodied in extracurricular activities, service-learning, and even school mission statements. It seems that we want to support community service, with the belief that it leads to positive character traits in our students.

Yet, the schools that are incorporating community service into their vision will often ask the philosophical question, “What is community service?” Some widespread views are that it must be altruistic efforts for the common good to improve the quality of life in the community. If it must be altruistic, then must individuals engage in tasks they dislike so that they will not get the benefit of enjoying their work? If it is contributing to the common good, then whose common good is that? If it is improving the quality of life, then what value system do we use to describe this quality? These questions arise in schools taking a serious look at serving their community.

A more practical question that arises in schools is, “How do I measure community service?” I hope you offer your school some advise from my own deliberations at the International School of Islamabad (ISOI), where community service is one third of our mission statement. Here, I advise the umbrella community service group ACT (Acting in the Community Together) and work on the Measurability Team that keeps our school in line with our strategic plan. Previously, I have served as a volunteer participant and leader in a number of organizations, including the Peace Corps - Ghana.

A lot of listening and observation has led me to propose five guidelines for schools measuring community service: planning, implementing, reflecting, celebrating, and equivalency. Community service is typically measured and reported in hours spent “doing” community service. I have found the actual delivery of service to be a fraction of the type of citizenship character and effort desired in students.

Especially in secondary schools, students should be utilized to plan and organize projects. Students can contact community agencies, gather required materials, inform other students of events, and gather individuals together to serve. This time is spent on the phone, in meetings, walking the hallways, and usually under the supervision of a teacher. For example, students have earned community service hours by organizing events such as the Earthquake Relief Concert 2005 fundraiser at our school and by visiting and assessing our adopted Kashmir village’s (Siana) needs for materials and services.

The implementation of community service is the most clear and traditional guideline for measurement. Students perform the organized project and impact the community, directly or indirectly, through their efforts. Our recent earthquake has been a mixed blessing in that it has motivated students to get active. The students here immediately organized material donations (i.e. food, drink, clothing, insulation, cooking utensils, medicine). They visited patients in hospices and hospitals, packed UNICEF winter clothing kits, and executed many other projects that are easy to measure with clear beginning and end times.

Reflection allows the benefits of community service to ‘sink into’ the head of students. Students should ponder the impact of their service, or simply why service gives them a warm feeling inside. In community service clubs, classrooms, and school wide gatherings, students can (and I believe should) take time to evaluate their experience because hopefully this is not their last time. The high school student council and environmental science class took time after our Earthquake Relief Concert 2005 to evaluate their ability to raise funds. Through structured or unstructured activities, schools can measure and thus reward students for their time spent in reflection, which is a key component in defining service-learning to purists.

I justify celebration has a measurement of community service in a rhetorical question. Would you deny the contribution of a handicapped student who could find know other way of serving than by cheering on his classmates that did so? The importance of taking time to celebrate is being seen more often these days. Students fatigue just like staff, and they need appreciation for their efforts. Many hours went into generating $3,500 at our concert, $ ??? in card sales, packing 33,000 winter clothing kits, delivering $ ??? worth of goods to our adopted village of Siana, and many other projects. These efforts have been appreciated sincere, although briefly, at school assemblies and this cheer encourages more service.

My fifth community service guideline that may be of use to your school is equivalency. Consider this the “loop hole” where students can earn community service hours without directly showing participation. Material or monetary donations could be taken as the equivalent of time spent in service – under the assumption that time was spent collecting that material or earning that money. Couldn’t schools define the collection of 50 cm of recyclable newspaper or the sale of 20 fundraising cards as one hour of community service? Our school has not put this guideline to use yet due to difficulties in interpretation, but it is an option.

In these guidelines, the opportunity for community service opens into a much broader field of interpretation. Community service hours can be measured and students can be rewarded for service as well as the corollary activities associated with them. Thusly, schools can recognize and record the various stages and achievements of students as global citizens, whether this takes place in the classroom, after school, in the community, or at home. These guidelines are meant to assist schools in their evaluation of community service, and I hope you find them helpful.