It has been a decade since SERVE (Students Engaging in Reflective Volunteer Experiences) began offering high school students meaningful opportunities to earn service hours during summer vacation.<\/span><\/p>\n Over the past decade, nearly 900 teens have provided 32,201 volunteer hours in the community at such places as Ozanam Inn, Second Harvest Food Bank, the Greenwalt Adult Day Center and local schools.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s not only service hours that students obtain. They also benefit from interacting and gaining insight with people and programs that they otherwise might never have encountered, including meeting students from other local high schools, said Shannon Murphy, Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans\u2019 director of volunteers.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was in seventh grade at St. Rita of Harahan, I took a field trip to Second Harvest, and I packed and sorted food. I liked it, so I went back for my service hours,\u201d said Rebekah Haase, 16, a St. Mary\u2019s Dominican sophomore who earned between 35-40 hours in one week last summer.<\/span><\/p>\n Haase said the service work \u201chelped me see how generous people are. If I hadn\u2019t done it, I wouldn\u2019t have seen all the food people are sending in for the people who need it. It helps me see that there are good people in the world, and I want to be one of those people. \u2026 It\u2019s not your typical service hours. It\u2019s just a good experience all around.<\/span>\u201d<\/p>\n Organized volunteering<\/b><\/p>\n Murphy was instrumental in putting the program together with her former Mercy High School religion teacher, Paula Taylor, who happened to be associate director of the archdiocesan Office of Religious Education at the time.<\/span><\/p>\n Murphy had worked for Catholic Charities for about a year and noticed that the teen volunteer program wasn\u2019t especially organized.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt was piecemeal; one student here, one student there,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n She learned of a successful volunteer program in Atlanta and really wanted local students to make relationships and gain something from volunteerism, so she created SERVE \u201cto put a face on poverty and see that these people are just like them; they just happen to have different circumstances.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In 2009, Hurricane Katrina recovery was still in full swing, so those volunteers worked with Operation Helping Hands in more physical labor of rebuilding homes.<\/span><\/p>\n Gradually, other summer SERVE opportunities were added, such as working on the Head Start programs with underprivileged youth and Summer Witness campers at St. Joan of Arc and St. Peter Claver parishes; and partnering with Good Shepherd Nativity School\u2019s summer program, senior citizens at the Greenwalt Day Care Center, Christopher Homes\u2019 Rouquette Lodge and the summer program at the non-denominational Faith Bible Church.<\/span><\/p>\n This summer, volunteers will have options of visiting the elderly at PACE Greater New Orleans and working at the Samaritan Center food pantry and backpack program in St. Tammany.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s really worked with the requirements that the high schools have for these service hours,\u201d Murphy said.<\/span><\/p>\n Annual impact<\/b><\/p>\n In 2018 alone, 42 high school students representing 17 high schools were SERVE volunteers. They contributed more than 1,000 volunteer service hours.<\/span><\/p>\n The organizations who receive the volunteer hours every summer say this extra help is invaluable.<\/span><\/p>\n