Community Service
Education is more than knowing; it's about doing and understanding!
Community service helps our students conceptualize the world as a complex, dynamic, and interconnected system - a system that they both are a part of and have an impact on. Engaging with the various levels of the community around them helps our students practice being more conscientious, compassionate, kind, and gives them opportunities to see the positive change they can create in our world.
Community Service Mission
The aims of ACS Community Service to develop caring young people who help to create a better and peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect to other. Service at ACS extends beyond the immediate school community and includes the world beyond our walls. This encourages students to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand other people differences.
Service hours must be charitable work where the student’s efforts are undertaken in order to support our community and give a helping hand where it is needed. Service can include working with NGO’s projects, elderly homes, orphanages, hospitals, summer camps for refugees, and SOS villages. Students are encouraged to contact local village municipalities or environmental organizations to work on cleaning or repairing the environment — the list is endless.
Community Service Support
Community service at ACS is focused on the empowerment of the student; it includes a social component, so students can develop into more than just a “vessel of knowledge.” ACS encourages students to initiate community service projects on their own with the guidance of the Community Service Coordinator and teachers.
Students should not rush through their hours accumulating as many as possible because they think it “looks good on paper.” Instead, students should look into what they have learned from the process and reflect on the efforts undertaken, and contribution made through community service project. With this in mind, students are expected to write a reflection within two weeks of having completed their project. These reflections are submitted to the Community Service Coordinator who works with and guides the students in developing a value in the quality of their project rather than quantity of hours they accumulate.
Working together, with parents support, the student’s appreciation of community service is developed and celebrated.
Community Service Requirements
ACS requires a minimum of 100 Community Service hours to graduate. In order to create an ongoing personal commitment to service, the 100-hour minimum is spread across the four years of high school experience, with 25 hours of service required per year. This requirement is pro-rated: students coming in Grade 10 need 75 hours, those in Grade 11 need 50 hours, and those in Grade 12 need 25 hours. At least 50% of a student’s hours must be earned in projects based outside of ACS. Many ACS students undertake community service that far exceeds the 100-hour minimum, of which we are justifiably proud.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.