President’s Volunteer Service Award

As chairperson for the President’s Volunteer Service Award, you are responsible for keeping the integrity of this special award.  The award recognizes youth volunteers for the service they have provided.  As a district, we will celebrate these students’ achievements in a ceremony on May 29, 2102 at Ward Melville High School.

Your job is to inform prospective candidates, collect volunteer log sheets, verify hours, and notify recipients of their achievement and to help the night of the ceremony.  You can establish a committee within your school to help you in any way.

There are 2 age categories and 3 awards.  14 and under (there was some discrepancy with the deadline of when you turn 15; you have to be 14 for at least 6 months of your 12 month term, then you qualify for the 14 and under award.  Since the district had to change the deadlines of handing in documents, and the 12 month tracking period has officially been changed to April 1, 2011 – March 31, 2012, the cutoff will be September 30, 2011. If you turn 15 September 30, 2011 or prior to that, you qualify for the older award.

14 and under: Bronze 50-74 hours, Silver 75-99 hours, Gold 100+ hours.

15 and over: Bronze 100-174 hours, Silver 175-249 hours, Gold 250+ hours.

Collect, Verify, Notify

1. Send a reminder to students of your deadline for all submissions.  You can do this by email, post it on your schools website or send a flyer.  Your deadline should be Monday April 2, 2012.  That should allow a few late entries to get to you by April 4, 2012, the last day before spring break.
2. Get your committee together to help you verify hours.  This is where you are responsible for the integrity of the award.  The more candidates your school has, the bigger your committee should be.  You should read through each individual log sheets and mark everything accordingly.  Our suggestions to make verifying easier:

ñ  Anything with a signed letter verifying the person’s hours on an organizations letterhead should be approved.

ñ  If there is a printed name and contact phone number along with a signature (no letter attached) and it is a teacher, school club organizer or scout leader; you should count that as approved…..unless it doesn’t make sense (then you can call to ask your questions).

ñ  If there is only a printed name and contact phone number, but no signature, then you MUST call to verify the volunteering actually did occur. (keep a list of places and names you need to call. Many times various students did the same community service and you can verify multiple candidates with one phone call)

******What does NOT count as volunteering: helping any family member (even extended family), anything that you got paid for, Drama club, any after school club that is not community service based, and MOST Girl Scout and Boy Scout booth sales (see exception below).*********

Booth sale exceptions:  If the booth sale money earned for the troop is used solely on community service projects or a volunteer opportunity then it can be approved.  Many older scouts raise money to help fund their community service projects for their Silver, Gold and Eagle awards---that is considered community service.  Many younger troops sell product to raise money for a really cool party, event or trip.  That is NOT community service.  If a letter is not given stating the sale is for community service, you may need to call the Leader in charge to verify.

*****If you verify hours, and find a candidate DOES not qualify for an award, you must call them to let them know.

3. Once all candidates are verified, you must send a detailed list of recipients to both Lisa Alvarez (nicsteph106@aol.com ) and Judi Wallace (wallace13@optonline.net ).  You must include the school name, the chairpersons’ name and a list by award (Bronze, Silver and Gold).  The names should be in alphabetical order by award---last name/first name and the # of hours they completed.  This must be emailed NO LATER than April 18, 2012.
4. Notify recipients about the ceremony.  Each school notifies/invites recipients a different way.  Some do so with an email, some send a formal invite in the mail.  It doesn’t matter how you notify/invite them, as long as you do.

The Ceremony

1. Photo Boards – The night of the ceremony, we like to put on display a tri-fold photo board of all volunteers from your school. We would like one from each school.  You can obtain these photos any way you can…you can send a note, and email etc. for each candidate to submit at least one photo of themselves doing community service. You can also get group shots from girl scout troops and boy scout troops, from student council etc. This is just a fun way to recognize the recipients.  These boards will be on display in the cafeteria.
2. Ceremony – Each school is responsible to have 2 volunteers to help the night of the event.  You must give us those names when you submit the names of the recipients.  (it can be the chair people or different adult volunteers).  One will be responsible to have all the candidates names printed on index cards, and to come the afternoon of May 29^th to the school to put them on the auditorium chairs.  Then at least one of them must be in the cafeteria to assemble your students in award/alphabetical order---and to stay with them until the procession. 
3. Schools financial responsibility – We are hoping the awards will once again be paid for by the TVTA.  If it is, then we will only be asking each elementary school for a $25 contribution and each Junior High and the High School for a $50 contribution.  This will be put towards light refreshments for after the ceremony.  If the TVTA is not funding the purchase of the awards, we will have to ask each school to pay for them. We will keep you updated.
4. Ceremony Committee – as we get closer, we will be asking for additional volunteers to help in the details of the ceremony and to help that night.  You may have a few parents in mind that you think would like to be on this committee or it can be you.  We will touch base with you around the end of February to get this going.  This will help us with refreshments, set up, organization of awards etc.

Thank you for helping with this years President’s Volunteer Service Award.  If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact either one of us.

Lisa Alvarez nicsteph106@aol.com

Judi Wallace wallace13@optonline.net