Opinion: Should Volunteering Be Required

Volunteering is an exceptional way for people to help their community. It’s a great way to show your community that you care and want to do something memorable without being paid. However, should it be a Greenwich High School requirement? 

At GHS, upperclassmen are required to complete five volunteer hours while taking either Civics or AP U.S. Government. GHS helps students with this requirement, providing a list of volunteer opportunities on its website. Yet, I personally don’t think this requirement makes sense. Volunteering should not be forced on students who already have a lot on their plates, such as balancing school, extracurriculars, jobs, and personal lives. Having to do work outside of class just for credits that doesn’t relate to the class is a bit excessive.

Why does it have to be these specific courses? Both Civics and AP U.S. Government focus on the American government. The volunteer work for these courses is a community service project intended to show students how volunteering is important to civic engagement. With this project, I’m curious about the reasoning behind it.

Does it have to do with GHS wanting students to complete some type of volunteer work before graduating? Or does it have to do with Greenwich needing volunteers? If GHS is suggesting that Greenwich needs volunteers, I would disagree. Truly, Greenwich might have too many volunteers.

 I have only volunteered once this year for a few hours because I thought the opportunity might be fun. Afterwards, I thought it would be a good idea to see if there were any long-term volunteer spots that I could do because I do believe volunteering is valuable. However, I found out that a lot of volunteer spots are no longer available. The volunteer opportunities I looked at were popular, but that would be because it was listed on the GHS website: which many students look at. I mentioned this to some of my friends and they had the same troubles. If only a few people I’ve talked to are in the same situation, then what about the rest of GHS students? 

Why force volunteering? Not all students have the desire to care for their community through volunteer work. Some students show they care towards being on teams, participating in clubs, or using creativity. Maybe GHS should allow any of their many activities that students can do at this school be used for the credits that are required for these courses instead?