What We're About
Our Vision
40Hours.ca aims to provide high school students with the necessary resources to be a positive impact in their communities through volunteering.
Our Mission
40Hours.ca empowers high school students and enhances their civic education in the following ways:
1) Matching students with compatible volunteer positions;
2) Actively promoting conscientious and active citizenship in high schools;
3) Making community involvement resources easily accessible.
Our Story
The idea to launch this project stemmed from the realization that high school students invariably delayed their 40 hours of volunteering to a month before graduation. In this last minute dash to snag a volunteer position, many students settled for placements that didn't fit their interests. A Toronto high school student was disheartened to see so many students treat the Community Involvement program like a 40-hour community service sentence.
Determined to reverse this mentality, 40Hours.ca was founded in 2007. As the only organization entirely dedicated to helping high school students complete the Community Involvement program, 40Hours.ca has streamlined the volunteer process. The website provides a wide array of volunteer ideas and positions to choose from; it's like Lavalife for student volunteers. 40Hours.ca has helped countless students find volunteer positions in which they are personally interested, a benefit both to themselves and the organizations for which they volunteer.
Now in its third year and still going strong, 40Hours.ca has expanded to the rest of Ontario. In the coming years, the project will expand in two stages: 1) into the other provinces and territories (British Columbia, Newfoundland, Yukon, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories) that mandate a similar high school community involvement program; 2) into the remaining provinces to encourage students to find a meaningful position despite having no obligation to volunteer. Hopefully such an initiative would encourage these provinces to implement a program of their own.