A Brief Note On Volunteer Hours

What you are contributing through the internship is truly invaluable. We believe that the time, the passion, and the energy that you are contributing through these projects cannot be compensated by anything. Volunteer hours, certificates, etc are thus not being given to you in return for the contribution or as compensation for your contribution to society. They are given merely as an acknowledgment of your service and contribution. Many interns who have applied for the internship have suggested that they would like to work selflessly in the spirit of Sewa and would not want to get even the volunteer hours. That indeed is commendable and we indeed respect their choice and their pure bhAva of service.

Nevertheless, the Dharma Internship Program would provide volunteer hours as a mark of respect for the contribution to all those for whom it is necessary. So here are a couple of points that may be helpful to understand how the volunteer hours will be given.

1) Volunteer hours only for contribution through project work: Volunteer hours are provided for the contribution made through the projects only. They will not be provided for the hours spent in learning sessions.

2) Maintaining accurate logs: An estimated number of volunteer hours will be provided for each project. But the volunteer hours will be provided on the actuals. All interns should maintain the logs containing the start and the end times, the number of hours for each activity, and the actual activity performed. This is done so that the sanctity of the process is maintained. Needless to say, they should be truthful and accurate.

Any deviation from the estimated time should be informed to the mentor early on, should duly justified and approved by the coordinator. For example, if a task that is assigned to you is taking more time than is estimated or you are doing something beyond the scope of the project that would you think would add value to what is being done it should be reported early on to the coordinator and mentor and should be approved. Any retrospective addition of hours will not be appreciated and may not be approved.

3) Approvals: The logs will be approved by the mentors and the coordinators after verifying that the contribution has indeed been made.

4) Volunteer hours provided only on completion: The volunteer hours will be provided only on satisfactory completion of the internship. If an intern drops out in between or is not able to complete the given task or assignment or the deliverable is not satisfactory, the volunteer hours will not be provided.

The estimated number of volunteer hours are given below for each group below (please note these are only estimations and the hours provided will be based on actuals only)

a) For rising sophomores, rising freshmen, and rising 8th graders, it is typically about 3-4 hours per week unless one wants to contribute more and takes up additional projects after being approved.

b) For rising Seniors, rising Juniors, and High school grads, it is about 6-8 hours per week.

c) For intern leaders and coordinators it is 10-12 hours or more.

5) For Presidential Volunteer Service Awards (PVSA), please note that we only authorize the volunteer hours and the awards by PVSA are subject to the eligibility criteria of the PVSA. HSS is duty-bound to credibly verify the hours that are claimed by the volunteer. So the volunteer may be asked to provide additional details and evidence for the volunteer hours being claimed. Presidential Volunteer Service Award will only be recommended when the team is satisfied with the details and evidence provided. In case of unsatisfactory evidence, the award will not be recommended. The details of how to apply for PVSA will be provided later.

One of the criteria for PVSA is that the volunteer has to be either a citizen of the United States of America or a permanent resident. So while HSS will be able to provide the volunteer hours and certificate on behalf of HSS to all the interns based on the volunteering work, if you further want to receive the PVSA too these additional eligibility criteria also need to be met.

The following is the number of hours required for the PVSA awards. Since HSS is not able to verify volunteer hours from other organizations it has been decided that starting 2021-22 only volunteer hours provided by HSS will be considered for PVSA.