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What is teen community service?

More and more high schools are requiring their students to perform a minimum number of hours of "community service" before they can graduate. Sometimes the community service is connected with a particular class, such as a health or guidance class. Other times, students are simply told that they must present documentation that they have completed their service requirement.

Students may meet their community service requirement in a variety of ways, but it always involves volunteer work. Paid work doesn't count. The service must benefit the community in some way, so students ordinarily look to nonprofit organizations and government agencies as venues for their volunteer work.

Schools with well-organized community service programs will have lists of suggested or approved work sites and guidelines for agencies that make use of their teen volunteers. The work sites will have clear expectations about providing a meaningful volunteer experience for the teens.

All too often, however, students find themselves on their own, scrambling for a work site that will let them put in their hours. While some agencies have put considerable thought into developing significant work programs for their volunteers, others leave the young people unsupervised or engaged in trivial, "make-work" projects. Well-planned programs, however, can deliver significant benefits to both the sponsoring agency and to the teen volunteer.

What are the benefits of a teen community service program?

During adolescence, young people are faced with many developmental tasks. There are a number of different ways to conceptualize these, but the framework presented by Elizabeth Fenwick and Tony Smith is a useful one.¹ They talk about four different developmental goals that teenagers must deal with from the ages of eleven to eighteen. These are independence, excitement, identity, and acceptance.

During adolescence, teens take their first steps away from dependence on their parents to the independence they will have as adults. They must learn about responsibility, decision-making, and the consequences of their inevitable (and hopefully small) acts of rebellion. A good volunteer service program will give teens the opportunity to develop their decision-making skills and take responsibility for their performance.

Managing excitement is a big task for teens. The physical and emotional changes they experience make the world an exhilarating and often scary place. Teens are full of energy. They are eager to try new experiences, dangerous ones as well as adult-approved activities. An effective teen community service program gives teens an option to passive reaction. It offers opportunities for active participation and ways to channel their considerable energy and enthusiasm.

All teens are trying to establish their own identities, separate from their parents. Excellent community service programs offer them adult roles to try on. By getting a close-up glimpse at adults at work, these volunteer programs also offer possible role models and career options. Even the opportunity to get to know some adults in a work environment helps teens to develop their individual identities as they interact with people in new ways.

Finally, all teens are looking for acceptance. They want the approval of their peers and the respect of adults in the community. Community service programs give teens the opportunity to shine, to present themselves to their friends and neighbors in a positive light. The formal recognition that is part of many volunteer programs is acknowledgement that the teen has made a contribution to the community.

Preparing to Enter the Work Force

Of course, teens are not just developing into adults. Hopefully, they are developing into productive adults who are ready to work. There has been some concern that high schools have not been effective about teaching adolescents the skills they will need to enter the work force. Accordingly, in the late 1980s, the Secretary of Labor charged a Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) to investigate the problem and to identify the basic skills that high school graduates should have in order to be ready to work.

The results of the Commission's work were released in several reports issued by the U.S. government in 1991 and 1992. The Commission identified some core enabling skills that all workers need. These are reading and writing, math and computational skills, and the basic communication skills of listening and speaking. In addition, they produced a list of "functional skills needed for effective work performance," ranging from resource and information management to social interaction and affective skills.² The complete list is included in Appendix A.

While high schools can do a great deal to try to integrate these essential work readiness skills into their curriculum, most experts agree that well-designed work experiences, paid or volunteer, are important laboratories for reinforcing these skills. Community service requirements for high school graduation recognize that students must have some initial guided experiences in the work force in order to acquire the skills they will need to be full members there.

The sponsoring agency also benefits from a teen community service program. It may take time and effort to plan and implement a good program, but the young volunteers will give back in many ways. They may enable the agency to augment or improve the services that are offered. They will definitely give the agency new insights into what makes teens tick and what teens expect from the community in general and from the agency in particular. The program itself will also build good will for the agency, as parents and local leaders see the teens engaged in meaningful work for the good of the community.

Libraries and teen community service programs

Public libraries are natural venues for excellent community service programs for the following reasons:

• There is a public library in most communities; it is readily accessible to most teens.
• The work that is done in public libraries is safe and healthy for young people to do.
• Youth services staff in public libraries are natural mentors, supervisors, and sponsors for teen volunteers.
• Teen volunteers can help the library better understand the teen segment of their user population and help the library to improve their service to teens.
• Public libraries are very labor-intensive. Good operations require that an extraordinary array of tasks be performed; many of these tasks can be done effectively by volunteers.
• A positive experience as a volunteer at a public library may cause a teen to consider a career as a librarian.
• It is easy to demonstrate the value of a teen's library volunteer work for the community.
• The public library offers opportunities for positive intergenerational interaction, an experience that brings many developmental benefits to teens.

The County of Los Angeles Public Library is committed to providing teens with voluntary community service experiences that will help them meet their most important developmental tasks and that will give them training in the basic skills they will need to enter the work force when they complete their formal education.

The following sections of this handbook will help library staff plan and implement an effective teen community service program in your library.

Developing the Program | Additional Resources | Appendices

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¹ Elizabeth Fenwick and Tony Smith, Adolescence (New York: DK Publishing, 1993).

² Identifying and Describing the Skills Required by Work. The Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, U.S. Department of Labor, 1992.
http://www.ttrc.dolete.gov.SCANS/esdrw/Scansrep.htm Last accessed June 29, 2000.

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Revised 03/07