When Volunteering Finally Clicks

Youth researcher Gabe Henriquez reflects on how awareness, opportunity, and community can transform service into meaningful experience.

By Gabe Henriquez

What have you most loved and appreciated about the work of the organization that you are involved in?

It takes the two things that I have interest in. It’s a research project, and I’ve done that a lot throughout my years as a student - in high school and now in college. Now, I’m in my second year at Humber. It’s also a topic that I have an opinion on: volunteering.

In high school, volunteering was simply something students completed. It was rarely something they [students] talked about together.

I didn’t get what my friends thought about it when I was in high school. We didn’t talk about volunteering. I had my thoughts, but I didn’t know what everybody else thought about it. This research created space to explore perspectives that had not surfaced before.

What is your connection to the organization, and why is it so important to you?

I’ve done the 40-hour requirement. It’s not much of a concern, for me, but I still want to see how it affects other people. My role included both community engagement and report development. I did data collection where I went into the community and asked people what they thought. The bulk of what I did for this project was in the latter stages when we were writing the reports; I was one of the reviewers. I checked over what some of my peers were writing, checked for writing conventions and overall cohesiveness of their arguments.

Part of me wonders if [volunteering] is just something that people chose to ignore, for whatever reason. Everybody must do this. Why is nobody talking about it? There must be a reason to that.

As you reflect on the facilitators and barriers you uncovered around youth volunteer engagement and the 40-hour graduation requirement, what surprised you most—and why do you think it landed that way for you?

The big thing for me is that a lot of people would not abolish the 40-hour requirement if it wasn’t mandatory. Some people would increase their required hours. Maybe now I could understand that because I’ve changed my mind a little bit on it, but me three years ago would have hated that idea. I remember seeing that a major issue was I either don’t have the time or I don’t have the means to get there.

What did this research help you see differently about youth, systems, or yourself that you hadn’t noticed before?

One of the issues that came up was simply finding opportunities. A lot of my opportunities that I ended up volunteering for were in fields that I was interested in. Over March break I did something related with music because I’m a musician. I’m in school for music right now, so it catered to my interests.

I used to not really think much of volunteering, but eventually it just sort of clicked that this can be a really enjoyable thing if you’re looking for the right stuff.

Given what you now understand, what feels most important to shift if meaningful change is going to occur?

Awareness of opportunities stands out as a critical shift. High schoolers need to be just more aware of what is around. It could be beyond the schools to do more to help them find opportunities that might be interesting to them.

If the conditions were right, what do you sense youth actually need in order to engage in volunteering in ways that feel life-giving rather than obligatory?

Finding volunteer opportunities that cater to your interests. You can try volunteering for anything, even if it’s something that you might not have much interest in but haven’t thought of prior. If you work with the right people, you have the right community when you volunteer, then it’s going to feel great.

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Curated by Phillip McAllister

This post is part of a larger Youth Research Project in association with Volunteer Halton. The intent is to share the depth of volunteer opportunities available to youth, how community can support and imagine together what is possible through this meaningful learning experience. Collectively, this aims to ensure Halton is a healthy, inclusive and resilient place to live.

Click here to read the full report produced by the youth research team.

Watch a presentation of the report by the youth research team.