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Community Service Has a Number of Important Benefits

Engaging in community service provides students with the opportunity to become active members of their community which has a lasting, positive impact on society at large. Community service or volunteerism enables students to acquire life skills, as well as provide a service to those who need it most. These are some of the common benefits of participating in a community service program:

1. Psychological benefits: Volunteering increases overall life satisfaction and helps you feel good about yourself because you are helping others.

2. Social benefits: Volunteering engages students with the community, creates special bonds with the population being served, and increases social awareness and responsibility.

3. Cognitive benefits: Volunteering helps students enhance their personal knowledge, grow from new experiences, and develop important interpersonal communication skills.

Participating in community service not only makes a difference to the organization and people being served, but also makes a difference to every student's career prospects. Participating in community service activities helps to enhance student resumes by allowing students to obtain work-related skills prior to graduation, builds good references for employers in regards to community involvement, and provides a forum to network with future potential employers. It also helps students develop civic and social responsibility skills and become more aware of what their community needs.

You can also make a positive contribution to your community by earning an online degree in criminal justice or psychology. Contact us today for more information about our programs where you can learn how to help real people and leave a positive impact on the world.

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Why is Community Service Important? - Florida National University

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Community Service Has a Number of Important Benefits Engaging in community service provides students with the opportunity to become active members of their community which has a lasting, positive impact on society at large. Community service or volunteerism enables students to acquire life skills, as well as provide a service to those who need it...

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An activist is anyone who sees the need for change and devotes their time to doing something about it. And, as successful teen activists prove, structural, social, or economic barriers don't have to stop you from pursuing your passion and creating positive change. If you are interested in making a difference for a cause you care about, you can do so by educating yourself about the issue, finding ways to get involved in-person and online, and possibly even pursuing a career in a field related to your cause.

Add New Question

Is registering people to vote a form of activism?

Bridget Connolly has volunteered on political campaigns at the local and federal level for over 10 years, most notably for the 2008 Obama campaign in Nevada and Josh Harder's Congressional race in 2018. She has gone door-to-door to help register voters and get out the vote in both California and Nevada.

Yes! Registering people to vote helps remove barriers for people who have been marginalized by educational systems, culture, and misinformation about the importance of their vote. I've had so many experiences where every vote counts. If 500 people are registering people to vote in a specific county, and we each get 1 person, and somebody wins by 400 votes, that's a really big deal. I think it's a civic duty for people who understand how politics work and understand that voting is at the bedrock of all of that. The people who don't vote are essentially disenfranchised; they aren't playing a part in what's happening with their tax dollars and who is representing them at the local, state, and federal level. All levels. It takes a lot of work to stay informed, but that's how our system is set up. You're voting people into power, so it's a civic duty.

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This article was co-authored by Bridget Connolly and by wikiHow staff writer, Christopher M. Osborne, PhD. Bridget Connolly has volunteered on political campaigns at the local and federal level for over 10 years, most notably for the 2008 Obama campaign in Nevada and Josh Harder's Congressional race in 2018. She has gone door-to-door to help register voters and get out the vote in both California and Nevada. This article has been viewed 888,355 times.

Updated: November 19, 2023

If you feel passionately about an issue and want to become an activist, start by contacting local or online organizations with a similar mission. Ask them if you can volunteer your time or donate your money to contribute to the cause. Alternatively, you can also promote your cause on social media, share news articles, and circulate online petitions to raise awareness. Be sure to stay well-informed by keeping current with any news related to your cause! For tips on finding organizations that support your cause, read on!

Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 888,355 times.

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An activist is anyone who sees the need for change and devotes their time to doing something about it. And, as successful teen activists prove, structural, social, or economic barriers don't have to stop you from pursuing your passion and...

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Read about Boyan Slat's Ocean Clean Up machine.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Learn about the Ocean Clean Up Project

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Founded 2013

Dutch inventor Boyan Slat founded The Ocean Cleanup at the age of 18 in his hometown of Delft, the Netherlands.

Non-profit foundation

We are fully reliant on donations from individuals, corporations, governments and institutions.

HQ Rotterdam

The Ocean Cleanup's team consists of 120 engineers, researchers, scientists, computational modelers, and supporting roles, working daily to rid the world's oceans of plastic.

Big problems require big solutions

Every year, millions of tons of plastic enter the oceans, primarily from rivers. And the plastic that's afloat within the oceans isn't going away by itself. To effectively solve the problem, we need to both turn off the tap and mop the floor at the same time.

The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit organization, is developing and scaling technologies to rid the world's oceans of plastic. Our aim is to put ourselves out of business once the oceans are clean.

Environment

Plastic pollution in the world's oceans is one of the biggest environmental issues of our time, impacting nearly 700 marine species.

Economy

According to a study conducted in collaboration with Deloitte, yearly economic costs due to marine plastic pollution are estimated to be between $6-19bn USD. The costs stem from the plastic's impact on tourism, fisheries and aquaculture, and (governmental) cleanups.

Health

Plastic pollution does not only impact sea life, it also carries toxic pollutants into the food chain - a food chain including us humans.

A simple idea turned into a moonshot project

At 16 years of age, Boyan Slat saw more plastic bags than fish when scuba diving in Greece. He thought: "Why can't we just clean this up?" This question led him to research the plastic pollution problem for a school project. He learned about plastic accumulating in five large oceanic gyres, the largest one being the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In 2012, Boyan Slat held a TEDx talk about how to rid the world's oceans of plastic using technology. The video went viral, and the momentum that followed allowed him to drop out of school and found The Ocean Cleanup.

Read more

After many years of research, development, testing, and iteration, The Ocean Cleanup now has technologies to intercept plastic in rivers before it reaches the ocean, and technologies to remove the plastic that is already out there-debris that has been building up for decades.

OCEAN SYSTEMS

Plastic, once trapped in a gyre, will slowly break down, continually fragmenting into microplastics. Microplastic debris (< 5mm) is not only more challenging to clean up, but is also easily mistaken for food by marine life. The time to clean up is now.

The ocean garbage patches are massive. To effectively clean an area of such magnitude, a calculated and energy-efficient solution is required. With a relative speed difference maintained between the cleanup system and the plastic, we can concentrate the plastic for extraction. Learn more about our ocean technology and System 03, our current ocean system iteration.

The harvested plastic will be brought back to shore for recycling. We made our very first product - The Ocean Cleanup Sunglasses - using the catch of System 001/B in 2019. Going forward, we do not intend to make our own products, but partner with companies who will use our ocean plastic in their products.

INTERCEPTORS™

1000 rivers, or 1% of the world's rivers, account for 80% of the plastic flowing into the oceans from land. We have developed a toolkit of Interceptors to tackle these rivers.

Together with corporations, governments and individuals globally, we plan on tackling 1000 of the most polluted rivers with our technology, knowledge, experience, and network.

The Ocean Cleanup is a project; our goal is to reach a 90% reduction of floating ocean plastic by 2040. To see all cleanup systems deployed, visit our Dashboard.

The impact of cleanup

Research shows the majority of plastic in the gyres (by mass) is made up of larger debris. By removing the plastic while most of it is still large, we prevent it from breaking down into dangerous microplastics.

Our aim is to have removed 90% of floating ocean plastic by 2040.

We plan to do this by cleaning up the legacy plastic - the plastic already floating in the ocean - and by stopping the sources of plastic flowing into our oceans.

Macroplastic in ocean surface layer. To clean up the ocean we need to stop new plastic coming in and clean up what is already out there. Lebreton et al (2019).

Leadership

To succeed in its mission, The Ocean Cleanup's management team relies on a combination of innovative talent and high-level industry experience. The organization also benefits from the invaluable support and guidance of its advisory boards.

Management team

Inventor since birth. Founded The Ocean Cleanup at age 18. Youngest ever recipient of the UN's highest environmental accolade; Champion of the Earth in 2015. Awarded the maritime industry's Young Entrepreneur Award in 2015 by HM King Harald of Norway.

Chosen as European of the Year by Readers Digest in 2017. Member of the Thiel Fellowship.

Over 15 years of experience in finance in senior positions across both for-profit and non-profit sectors. MSc in International Business Administration from Erasmus University Rotterdam (2006) and an International Executive Master of Finance and Control from Maastricht University (2014). Previous roles include senior positions at ING, GE, and Greenpeace.

Joël Jansen has worked for over 14 years in the offshore industry, gaining practical,
technical, safety, and leadership experience at Ampelmann, a high-tech start-up turned
scale-up. He has a broad professional background in the fields of R&D, engineering,
quality, health, safety, and environment; project engineering; and management. Joël
holds a BSc in Civil Engineering and an MSc in Offshore Engineering, both from
Delft University of Technology.

As a critical thinker and realistic optimist, he is at his best in dealing with changing circumstances and ambiguity, reducing complexity to its bare essence. Driven by delivering environmental impact in a professionally disciplined setting. He has a passion for water, as he was raised, and is currently living on the water. A self-made entrepreneur experienced in technology-driven start-ups and scale-ups.

After selling his last venture, BusinessForensics, delivering financial crime prevention solutions to the financial industry, he joined the Ocean Cleanup. Initially, as the Director for Business Development in the River Team, where his aim was to turn dirty rivers into profitable business opportunities, operating as a venture lab. He currently holds the position of River Director. In his words, he transitioned 'from catching criminals to catching plastics', where the latter proves to be both more challenging and more fulfilling

Supervisory Board

COO at bioMason; former executive roles with Tesla, SunEdison, Cypress Semiconductor, and Next Gen Powersystems. Holds a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Micro-Electronics from the Katholieke University in Leuven. Currently serves as an advisor to Holo, a novel metal 3D printing solution, and Torramics, a microfluidic pump solution, and Shyft, a smart energy management solution.

Non-executive director at The Prysmian Group and Shop Apotheke Europe. Former CFO at Royal FrieslandCampina and Royal HaskoningDHV. Other former leadership roles at Leaf, CSM and Boston Consulting Group. Holds an MBA and a M.Sc. in Econometrics and Operations Research.

Entrepreneur and offshore Engineer. Partner at FORWARD.one a venture capital firm for hardware. Co-founder of Ampelmann Operations BV.

Entrepreneur, Filmmaker and Investor. Former director at PharmAccess Foundation and Health Insurance Fund. MSc. Civil Engineering (hydraulic Engineering).

Honorary Chair Royal DSM (former CEO, 2007-2020), Chairman Supervisory Board Royal Philips, non-executive Director Unilever, Member Supervisory Board Dutch Central Bank. Co-chair Global Climate Adaptation Centers, Climate Leader for the World Bank Group (Carbon Pricing Champion), Member Board Trustees World Economic Forum. Awarded Humanitarian of the Year (2010) by United Nations, Honorary Doctorates Universities of Groningen & Maastricht, Listed by Fortune World's Greatest Leaders (2018) and by Harvard Business Review World's 100 most successful CEO's (2019), Decorated as Grand Officer in order or Orange Nassau.

Join
the team

Contribute with your skills and build a clean future together.

Fund the cleanup

With your donations, we can continue to scale the cleanup.

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The Ocean Cleanup is a non-profit organization, developing advanced technologies to rid the oceans of plastic. Solving it requires a combination of closing the source and cleaning up what has already accumulated in the ocean and doesn't go away by itself.

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Read about the Great Pacific Water Patch and why it is an issue.

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Skip to main content

The Ocean Cleanup has a system for removing plastic from the sea. The group ran into problems early on. But now the system is up and working.

"I am very proud to share with you that we are now catching plastics," the group's founder, Boyan Slat, says. He spoke to reporters on October 2.

The Ocean Cleanup system is a floating barrier × barrier HERO IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES an object that blocks movement from one place to another (noun) The garden was surrounded by a barrier to keep deer from eating the berries. . It uses a giant screen that hangs below the water's surface. The screen traps pieces of plastic as they float by. It does not trap marine animals.

The barrier didn't work well last year. It floated at the same speed as the plastic it was meant to catch. Since then, an underwater parachute has been added. This slows down the barrier. Now it can catch the faster-moving plastics.

The device is being used in an area of the Pacific Ocean known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Some 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic have collected there. The pollution harms animals. It also gets into the food chain. Slat hopes to get half of the trash cleaned up by 2025.

The next step is to improve the barrier so it will be able to gather plastic trash for a year. Then a ship will carry the trash away. "It's definitely not going to be easy," Slat says.
Stop and Think! What questions would you ask Boyan Slat if you were to write an article about the Ocean Cleanup system? How would you come up with interview questions?

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The Ocean Cleanup has a system for removing plastic from the sea. The group ran into problems early on. But now the system is up and working. "I am very proud to share with you that we are now catching...

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On National Child Day, meet clean water activist Autumn Peltier | CBC Kids News

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Read to learn more about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and how Boyan and his team will tackle this issue.

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Ocean Cleanup | Blog . DESIGN SQUAD GLOBAL | PBS KIDS

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Read about Time Person of the Year, Greta Thunberg and her achievements as a climate activisit.

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Greta Thunberg “a bit surprised” to be Time Person of the Year

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Greta Thunberg “surprised” to be Time’s Person of the Year.

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Learn more about Greta Thunberg: how she started her work and what she does to address climate change.

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Greta Thunberg Is TIME's 2019 Person of the Year

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The climate activist has succeeded in turning vague anxieties about the planet into a worldwide movement calling for global change

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A quick bio on Great Thunberg and her work.

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(born 2003). Swedish activist Greta Thunberg worked to address the problem of global warming. She founded a movement known as Fridays for Future (also called School Strike…

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Boyan Slat & The Ocean Cleanup Rid the Seas of Plastic #PMIFuture50

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Interesting facts about Greta Thunberg and her mission.

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Meet the teenager whose one-person protest sparked a worldwide climate revolution! Discover more about this young eco-hero in our top ten Greta Thunberg facts...
Who is Greta Thunberg?

1) Greta Thunberg is an environmental activist. She was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2003. When she was eight, she started learning about climate change. The more she learned, the more baffled she became as to why so little was being done about it.

2) At the age of 11, Greta became so sad about climate change that she temporarily stopped speaking!

3) Greta has Asperger syndrome, a condition that affects how people socialise. But Greta views her condition as a positive, calling it her "superpower"! She says it helps her see the world in black and white, and that there are "no grey areas when it comes to climate change."

4) In August 2018, Greta decided to take action. Instead of going to school, she made a large sign that read ' SCHOOL STRIKE FOR CLIMATE ', and calmly sat down outside the Swedish parliament. Her aim? To make politicians take notice and act to stop global warming.

5) Greta was inspired by teenage activists in Florida, USA, who were protesting to end gun violence. Read more about the School Strike for Climate protests that Greta inspired!

6) Greta's strike was picked up by the Swedish media, and the word started to spread. Soon enough, tens of thousands of students from around the world joined her #FridaysforFuture strikes - skipping school on Fridays to protest against climate change.

Greta with her original sign outside the Swedish parliament.

7) In March 2019, climate campaigners across the world, and inspired by Greta, came together to co-ordinate the first Global Strike for Climate. It was huge - over 1.6 million people from 125 countries took part! There are further global strikes planned for September this year.

8) Since her strike began, Greta's life has become a whirlwind! She's given rousing speeches to politicians, to the EU parliament, the UK parliament, to protesters and more. She's appeared in documentaries and had loads of books and articles written about her. She's even been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize!

9) In August 2019, Greta travelled on a wind and solar-powered boat from Plymouth, UK, to New York, USA - the journey took 15 days! Greta will be at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York, where she'll demand action from world leaders.

10) Greta has named Rosa Parks, the civil rights activist, as one of her greatest inspirations. In the 1950s, Rosa sparked a civil rights movement that improved the lives and treatment of millions of African Americans.

What do you think of our Greta Thunberg facts? Let us know by leaving a comment, below!

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Who is Greta Thunberg, and is she making a difference? Discover more about this young eco-hero in our top ten Greta Thunberg facts...

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Times for Kids Q&A with Great Thunberg

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A member of the Wiikwemkoong First Nation, Autumn Peltier, 16, lives in Canada. She advocates for clean water for that country's indigenous × indigenous TORRIPHOTO-GETTY IMAGES native to a particular place (adjective) Wild sunflowers are indigenous to North America. people. TFK Kid Reporter Pranav Mukhi spoke with her about the power of youth activism.

1. What does water mean to First Nations people?

We believe that we are part of the land, and that we come from the land. We learn that we have a right to protect the land and protect the water.

2. What problems do indigenous communities in Canada face when it comes to water?

They often have little access to clean drinking water because of landfills, oil spills, or old mining sites. For more than 20 years, these communities have been told to boil their water. Canadians have little awareness of this issue.

3. I heard that you took your concerns to Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada.

I met him in 2016. I was told not to say anything to him, just to give him a gift. When he reached for the gift, I pulled back. I said, "I'm very unhappy with the choices you made and the broken promises to my people," and I started crying. He said, "I will protect the water."

4. What has the prime minister done since then?

He promised to solve all boil-water advisories × advisory sanitation × sanitation Massive lightning bolt on 30.07.2017 at Zusmarshausen west of Augsburg (Bavaria). a warning or an alert, often one that recommends an action to be taken (noun) The weather advisory said to expect a thunderstorm tonight. in Canada by March 2021. But there are still 54 advisories in First Nations communities, 44 in Ontario alone. Ontario has suffered the most, with poor housing and MEDIANEWS GROUP/READING EAGLE/GETTY IMAGES conditions such as adequate sewage and trash removal (noun) The city began to smell because of its poor sanitation. , and not having drinking water.

5. You are the chief water commissioner representing 39 First Nations in Ontario. What is your role?

I take ideas, questions, and concerns about water from the communities to our council leaders. And I have a say in decision-making.

6. Do you ever work with other water activists?

I meet many youth advocates for the environment in my travels. I know a lot of children my age, some older and some younger, who are doing the same work. It gives me hope and courage to know there are others out there.

7. What can be done to protect the world's water?

There are industries that are trying to do things like dump toxic waste into the Great Lakes. We can't change these industries. But we can try to talk to them and raise our concerns. Clean drinking water is a basic human right. It doesn't matter what color our skin is. It doesn't matter if we're rich or poor.

8. What would you tell kids who want to speak out on behalf of others or the environment?

It is important to speak up on behalf of those who are too afraid to speak up. It can be as easy as writing a letter to your local leaders. The message is so much more powerful when it comes from a young person. You can be the light in someone's darkness.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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A member of the Wiikwemkoong First Nation, Autumn Peltier, 16, lives in Canada. She advocates for clean water for that country's indigenous people. TFK Kid Reporter Pranav Mukhi spoke with her about the power of youth activism. 1. What does...

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GRETA THUNBERG: How YOU can make change | Newsround

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Read about Autumn's early life and work as an activist.

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Autumn Peltier is an Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) environmental activist. She has spent more than half her young life working to bring clean water to Indigenous peoples in Canada.…

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Read Autumn's chapter in "Kid Activists". Visit 6th Grade Bulletin Board and take off the wall.

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The Greta generation - youth activism around the world

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Read about Autumn's initiative.

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Some communities still boiling water before drinking

You know something's wrong when a child speaks up.

That's how Autumn Peltier, a 16-year-old from Wiikwemkoong First Nation in Ontario, framed her fight for clean drinking water in Canada's Indigenous communities.

The teen, who's originally from Manitoulin Island but currently living in Ottawa, told CBC Kids News she'd rather spend her free time doing normal kid stuff.

Instead, she's making speeches on the international stage about the fact that some Canadians don't have access to clean water.

"Water is a basic human right. Everyone deserves access to clean drinking water, no matter what our race or colour is or how rich or poor we are," Autumn said.

Autumn seized the opportunity to share that message with the world when she addressed the United Nations in 2018 and again in 2019.

In 2019, she was also named chief water commissioner for the Anishinabek Nation, which means she speaks on behalf of 40 First Nations in Ontario.

As of October, more than 40 Indigenous communities in Canada had boil water advisories in place, which means residents have to boil their water before it's safe to drink.

During the federal election campaign in 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to get rid of all boil water advisories in the country by March 2021.

Now leaders in many of those communities are saying Trudeau's government won't meet that deadline.

In October, the prime minister said more than 100 boil water advisories have been lifted since that promise was made, and his government continues to work "very hard" to reach its goal.

As for Autumn, she said the idea that time is running out "keeps me up when I can't sleep at night."

Click play to watch Autumn tell her story in her own words:

Interested in watching more profile videos featuring Canadian teen activists? Check out these links:

With files from Olivia Stefanovich/CBC
TOP IMAGE CREDIT: Andrew Lee/CBC, graphic design by Allison Cake/CBC

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WATCH - Teen activist Autumn Peltier demands clean water for all | CBC Kids News

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You know something's wrong when a child speaks up. That's how Autumn Peltier, a 16-year-old from Wiikwemkoong First Nation in Ontario, framed her fight for clean drinking water in Canada's Indigenous communities. The teen, who's originally from Manitoulin Island but currently living in Ottawa, told CBC Kids News she'd rather spend her free time doing normal kid stuff.

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Every young person has what it takes to make a difference. Discover how teens can harness their skills and beliefs to make a positive change by becoming a youth activist.

Emme Raus, Boys & Girls Clubs of America

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How to Be a Youth Activist: Five Ideas for Getting Started

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Every young person has what it takes to make a difference. Discover how teens can harness their skills and beliefs to make a positive change by becoming a youth activist.