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Students in the LFHS chapter of the National Honor Society were disappointed when ongoing service events such as Feed My Starving Children and Bernie’s Book Bank were no longer accepted for volunteer hours as of Oct 10.
NHS event coordinator Kelsey Bumbaco said “people were just really mad after we shut down Bernie’s [Book Bank] and Feed My Starving Children.”
A requirement of holding membership in NHS is obtaining five hours by the start of the first semester, ten hours by the end of January, and another ten hours by the end of May. A common method of obtaining these hours is through on-going events that students can freely sign up for at any time, typically through organizations such as Bernie’s Book Bank or Feed My Starving Children.
“I love Feed My Starving Children. I got my five hours there over the summer,” NHS member Brady Gamrath said.
According to NHS staff advisor Corey Holmer, the restriction on ongoing service events served as a way to fulfill an agreement between local organizations that needed volunteers to finish projects such as the Gorton Center, Fill a Heart 4 Kids, and Beacon Place.
“What we saw was that a lot of kids were using Bernie’s Book Bank and Feed My Starving Children to knock out their hours,” said Holmer. “So we kind of thought, let’s remove that temptation. Let’s see if we can spread our service to these other organizations.”
However, not all students were disappointed with the original restrictions.
“If everybody goes to those two organizations, it detracts from the overall purpose of community service, so I do understand why they did it,” said Gamrath.
As of Jan. 16, a new NHS rule, dubbed the “4 Rule” has softly lifted the restrictions on ongoing service events. The latest rule states that any volunteer work now counts as NHS hours as long as four NHS members are present.
“Now, the reason why we change second semester is that we don’t have as many partners organizations second semester; it’s clear first semester is busier with those. So now that second semester has kicked in, we made [ongoing events] available again but the spin on it is four NHS students at any event will count towards hours,“ said Holmer.
Members of NHS are happy with the change.
“I think [ongoing events are] a great way for people to just do more community service as well as get their hours done,” NHS Member John Nikitas said.
Many students volunteer for ongoing events out of convenience, with many students taking advantage of the ease of signup.
Holmer said, “I see why people [volunteer for ongoing events], but we’re just trying to make sure that when the organizations reach out to us, we’re able to support those organizations.”
