Less Community Service

Why You Should Stop Signing Up Your Kid for Community Service (and, instead, encourage him to do something that makes an IMPACT)

Community service has become the fourth pillar of a strong college application: grades, boards, extracurriculars and volunteerism. Unfortunately, the bar is low for what constitutes volunteering, and it can range from the meaningful (developing a strong and lasting tutoring relationship with a child from a neighboring low income community) to the convenient (helping out at sports practice for the local club program). These days, there can be an impulse to pursue community service quickly and/or efficiently (for example, by going on a week-long relief trip that fulfills the global hourly requirement for volunteering all at once). And because today’s high school student has less free time than at any point in recent memory, it can be hard to blame teens for treating community service as a check the box exercise.

There are obviously some teens who gain tremendously from participating in community service. And volunteerism has the potential to provide significant benefit to the community that might not otherwise accrue absent formal, adult-led community service programs. But there is another way to promote teen volunteerism and community engagement that is substantive and challenging and enriching to both the teen and the community: the impact project. An impact project is a teen-led, locally-based initiative that addresses a problem in the teen’s community, however defined. In contrast to a broad “save the world” type project, impact projects prompt teens to think about local problems and to brainstorm and then implement solutions. As an added bonus, impact projects that are authentically teen-led force kids to use and develop higher level skills like communication, collaboration and critical thinking that otherwise might not be engaged in typical community service projects. 

Impact projects can take an almost infinite variety of forms, ranging from information campaigns to ongoing initiatives to “done in a day” undertakings. Impact projects also give teens the opportunity to link their academic interests and extracurriculars with their volunteerism. For example, a student with a stated interest in political science who participates in the Model UN club at school might organize a Youth Town Hall, in which community leaders and teens gather to discuss local issues of interest and concern to the younger population. To carry out such a project, the teen would have to secure a venue, communicate and coordinate with local leaders and advertise and promote the event. Alternatively, a teen with an interest in science and art could organize and sponsor a local competition, the winner of which would paint a design on a storm drain to draw attention to the issue of water contamination by runoff.

Significantly, a well planned and executed impact project looks fantastic on a college application (and, in fact, it looks a lot more impressive than adult-led community service). Why is this? Colleges want to know what applicants will bring to their campus communities, and specific evidence of a positive footprint at home is compelling. In fact, a recent essay prompt in the Yale College application asked applicants to describe (“the community to which you belong, and the footprint you have left”). Impact projects also demonstrate an applicant’s strengths to a teacher or mentor who can write a thoughtful and supportive recommendation letter. There’s a limit to how much grades and test scores can tell a college admissions officer. In contrast, a successful impact project can show just how much a teen is capable of, both at home and on a college campus.

Interested to know more? We’ve compiled a database that includes hundreds of potential impact project ideas that can be customized to fit almost any student or community. We’ve also constructed some of the high level scaffolding to give teens some constructive ideas on how to execute such a project. Impact projects don’t have to be time-consuming to be valuable. With forethought and strategic planning an impact project can be as convenient as a pre-packaged community service program.

Traditional community service is valuable, but it has limitations. Comparatively speaking, a well-chosen impact project enables a teen to give back to the community while developing important, higher level skills. And there’s no question that a teen will benefit more, both personally and in the college application process, by spending volunteer hours on a self-directed, community-based initiative than in an adult-led and highly-structured setting.