Service Opportunities for Students
Service-focused associations are an important and invaluable resource to New York City. The following are a few organizations that partner with schools for service and service-learning opportunities. Disclaimer: The NYC Department of Education does not endorse and is not responsible for the policies and practices of these organizations. All work with partner organizations, particularly off-site visits, should be conducted in accordance with the Chancellor's Regulations.
Note to service organizations: If your organization offers a service or service-learning opportunity and you would like to be included on this list, please click
here.
Best Buddies pairs students with disabilities in one-to-one friendships with high school students.
BuildOn provides a variety of service activities, such as tutoring elementary school students, volunteering at senior centers, serving meals at soup kitchens, renovating community centers, and environmental restoration.
generationOn offers training, curriculum, technical assistance, public service events, and much more.
City Meals (http://www.citymeals.org)
Vivienne O’Neill | 212-687-1234 At City Meals, students can volunteer through the Visiting program, which brings together meal recipients and kindhearted people. Other programs include registering for Senior Chat, an opportunity for students to speak with elderly individuals by phone once a week.
After the fall penny collection of the Penny Harvest, students form Philanthropy Roundtables to study community problems and determine which organizations could best alleviate those problems. In the spring, students use the money to make grants.
CtA's goal is to get people who are entitled to government resources to have them. To do this, volunteer community members are trained to do the referral work and serve as community leaders.
Coro offers Exploring Leadership, a service-learning curriculum that is aligned with the principles of service learning. Coro also provides assistance in designing and implementing service-learning projects.
The Equal Exchange Organic & Fair Trade Fundraising Program is a way for groups to make money for schools and charities while making a difference in the lives of small farmers and their environments. Students learn about where their food comes from and the difference our everyday actions make in communities around the globe.
The Foster Parent Advocacy Foundation provides community outreach awareness about foster care. Students can get involved in advocacy for changes in child welfare policies.
Come and learn how to garden with your neighbors. This includes activities such as watering, weeding, planting, digging, raking, harvesting, cleaning, painting and other arts and crafts, learning to re-use materials from nature, building and composting. You will never get bored and you will certainly leave with a strong sense of accomplishment and wonder.
The Project Citizen program allows students to select a problem, research alternative policies, create a policy, and develop an action plan to support their policy. Students can develop a portfolio which can be presented to the public.
The Keep a Child Alive organization encourages students to participate in Kid Power to help raise money for HIV/AIDS awareness and treatment. Student fund-raising projects include lemonade stands, birthday and/or graduation parties for KCA, bake sales, and garage sales.
The LEAGUE offers more than 1,400 lesson plans, created by the curriculum division Learning to Give. These lesson plans are correlated to meet New York State academic standards, and can be fully integrated into the classroom.
The goal of MillionTreesNYC is to plant and care for one million new trees throughout New York City over the next decade. Classrooms can participate in free tree education programs, plantings on school grounds and service-learning opportunities from the NYC Parks Department, New York Restoration Project and other nonprofit organizations. Learn more at
http://www.milliontreesnyc.org/html/programs/toolkit.shtml..
One Brick provides volunteer opportunities for students in areas, such as Education, Environment, Poverty, Health, Youth, Community, Art, and Animals.
READ empowers teens by providing them with community service opportunities and jobs as reading tutors during the school year and summer.
The Schools Serve mission is to End Childhood Hunger in America by uniting America’s schools and school families around the cause. Planning materials and posters are offered, along with tools and inspiration for making a school food drive even more effective and ideas for expanding drives in new and impactful ways.
By forming a UNICEF High School club, students between the ages of 14-18 can get involved with UNICEF. The program is a detailed year-long curriculum that empowers students to educate themselves about global humanitarian issues with educational resources and hands-on activities.
Vote18 offers a 45-minute civics education and engagement program taught in high school classrooms that can be used for service or service-learning projects for high school students.
Our Partners
The Service in Schools Initiative is a collaboration between students, teachers, parents, principals, schools, support networks, the Department of Education, and our partner organizations. Lead partners for this initiative are:
NYC Service In April 2009 Mayor Michael Bloomberg answered President Barack Obama's call to service by announcing the
NYC Service initiative. NYC Service will provide programmatic and technical support.
generationOn
generationOn mobilizes the energy, ingenuity and compassion of young people to discover their power and potential to solve real world problems through volunteer opportunities. generationOn is working with school leaders and Service Coordinators to provide training and technical support for Service in Schools throughout the school year.
The After School Corporation (TASC) The After School Corporation develops and promotes models for after-school and summer programs that demonstrably improve kids’ school engagement, motivation and achievement at a cost public funding can sustain, and that keep kids safe while parents work.