Community Service at School

Abstract

Although the term ’volunteer activity’ is becoming more and more widespread today, most people are not familiar with its exact meaning, the way it works, its advantages and the opportunities it can offer. According to the definition of the United Nations Volunteer (UNV) programme, volunteer activity “should be undertaken voluntarily, according to an individual’s own free-will, should be of benefit to someone other than the volunteer, should not be undertaken primarily for financial reward”. It is of vital importance to acquaint youth with the essence of volunteer activity, as it can provide several opportunities for them.
According to the new Act on Public Education, each student graduating after 2016 has to perform 50 hours of community work before leaving school. The service is compulsory but students can choose the activity to be completed.
The success of the new legislation significantly depends on how different members, especially students, are motivated and committed, therefore it is important to inform them about the possible advantages of volunteer activity, as well as explore and eliminate the reasons why they might resist.
The aim of our research was to examine the need for the different fields of service, to identify the activities that are most interesting and suitable for the students. Besides, we also wanted to find the ones that they do not prefer.
Our goal was to contact as many students as possible, involve individuals with different social background and to get detailed and complex information from the answers. Thus, we employed two methods to carry out the research, both questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, to explore the students’ motivation, commitment, revulsion, experiences and their knowledge in this topic.
In order to make this regulation successful it is necessary to prepare students properly, pass the entire information to them, as well as to cooperate and join forces. Not only the students, but teachers, parents and host organisations are required to make efforts. They all have a great responsibility in affecting high school students’ and public opinion and it is important how they will be able to support and motivate participants to accomplish this task.