Mississippi Mills students offered unique volunteer opportunities
Posted Jun 3, 2010 By Arnie Francis
Email
Print
Tweet ThisEMC News - The Mississippi Mills Residents' Association (MMRA) is offering Community Service Volunteer hours to high school students who are residents of Mississippi Mills. The Ontario Ministry of Education requires students entering Grade 9 in Ontario to complete 40 hours of volunteer work in order to earn their high school diploma. The aim is to encourage students to become actively involved in making positive contributions to their community.
The MMRA's offer is seen as quite unique, as it relates to community service during the municipal election period. Most volunteer activity occurs within the environment, faith, social services, health, arts/culture and sports/recreation fields. The MMRA offers students a volunteer experience in civics and the exercise of citizenship in a democracy. Current high school students will likely have just one chance to benefit from this experience as municipal elections happen only once every four years. Students would help with non-partisan, municipal election activities during the period July 1 - Oct. 30. Specifically, Student Community Service Volunteer hours will be given for supervised MMRA community service activities, some of which may include the following:
- Pre-election staking and/or post-election removal of signs for various candidates (not candidate-specific),
- Depositing candidate leaflets/ brochures in mail boxes, or handing out leaflets/ brochures at public events (not soliciting votes or discussing candidate policy positions),
- Non-partisan note-taking at various public events (Town Hall meetings, All Candidate meetings, etc),
- Assisting with set up and tear down of MMRA-sponsored events (including materials, signs, garbage collection, etc).
- Writing up a short series of articles (2-3 paragraph each) based on the results of MMRA's Election Issues Survey for submission to local papers.
- In a two-team unit, conduct an "interview" of every candidate based on survey issues.
- Helping out at a table/booth that has MMRA, election and candidate information at various venues (e.g. the Almonte Farmers Market, outside the Pakenham General Store/Union Hall, etc).
These are high-quality volunteer opportunities for Mississippi Mills high school students and placement will be based on applications received. For more information, interested students may contact the MMRA at info@mmra.ca or consult their school bulletin boards.
Submitted by Arnie Francis, MMRA Communications Director.
blog comments powered by Disqus
