Kealakehe Intermediate Students’ Community Service Ideas
Students visiting booths at the career fair
What’s a simple way to find out how students want to help their community? Ask them!
This past March, Kealakehe Intermediate School hosted a career fair to introduce students to local career pathways. As part of our booth highlighting nonprofit management as a career pathway, we asked students to imagine that they could do anything to benefit their community. They wrote down and discussed their project ideas with us, and we’re glad to be able to share some of the two hundred and fifty ideas with you!
How do students want to help their community?
Kealakehe Intermediate students are certainly eager to mālama the environment. The top responses were to pick up trash and clean up beaches. Species and habitat conservation, as well as eco-friendly practices were also popular.
Many students want to help others in need, particularly those that are homeless or hungry.
Students are also great sources of non-specific ideas for projects like fundraising, donating to charity, and being kind to others. If these are the activities students would like to help with, maybe you can apply them to your own cause to attract youth volunteers!
Many students consider the school part of their community, as well, so there were plenty of ideas for school improvement. Some of the students we spoke to were very passionate about improving school lunches and extracurricular opportunities, in particular. But several also wanted to see the school have improved class offerings, get more funding, and help teachers.
# of Ideas per Category
All the ideas we collected from students.
There were a ton of other great answers, including: improving community amenities and transportation, forming groups and activities to bring people together, improving health, helping keiki and kupuna, raising technology literacy and access, helping shelter animals, improving education and tutoring access, upholding students’ specific ideals, and supporting churches.
Making Use
Overall, we were thrilled to get such a great range of ideas for causes to support, as well as methods for making this a better place for youth and the communities they belong to. We hope that by sharing this information with others, it will inspire them to create more opportunities for youth and have their own conversations.
Let us know how you will use this information! And please let us know if you gather ideas yourself, or have any youth-sourced data to share. We’re always eager to hear what youth care about. It is everyone’s kuleana to work together to include and uplift our youth, so please get in touch if you’d like to talk about connecting with your community’s future leaders.
