Hey teens! Looking to volunteer? Read on for 40 ideas, a mix of organizations and do-it-yourself approaches. Perhaps you’re required to volunteer for your school, or for an honors club like my teens were. And, yes, it looks good on a college application.
Parents surveyed – 29,769 parents of adolescents, to be exact – described their teens who volunteer as healthier and more flourishing than those of teens who don’t. Volunteering also leads to fewer behavioral problems and less anxiety (so says the National Survey of Children’s Health.)
Or, as Booker T. Washington said, “Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.”
I’ve prioritized hands-on activities, but non-profits also need cash donations. Each of the volunteer organizations accepts teens of any age unless noted. Browse for the topic that interests you, then read on for specific ideas and links to search where to volunteer nearest you.
Animal Assistance
Best for: Animal lovers who want to help those in need of care, homes, or healthcare.
Details: National organizations like the Humane Society and ASPCA offer volunteer opportunities for those 18 and up. Roles include advocacy for animals, field rescue, and pre-vet programs.
Local animal shelters often allow younger teens to participate. For example, FOHA in Aldie, VA, encourages teens, parents in tow, to sign up for cat snuggling or dog walking. Or make toys at home from items around the house.
The Dumb Friends League in Colorado holds a junior volunteer day to introduce opportunities. You’ll work alongside adult volunteers and staff in the daily care of the animals.
Keep in mind: According to American Humane, only 25% of dogs and 24% of cats that enter animal shelters end up adopted.
DIY: Collect pet food from houses around your neighborhood and bring it to a local shelter.
Arts & Crafts
Best for: Creative types looking for an outlet to share your gifts.
Details: Letters Against Isolation volunteers send “isolated and lonely seniors letters to brighten their days!” Recipients include older people around the world. Your drawings will grace colorful cards and include thoughtful communications with hand lettering.
Operation Gratitude sends 200,000 care packages to military service members every year. If you live in Southern California, volunteer at a local event. Outside LA, write letters, craft custom pillowcases, or collect Beanie Babies to donate.
Keep in mind: Put together a craft group to turn this individual activity into a social one.
DIY: Collect a group of friends and make cards for each other’s grandparents or far-away friends and relatives.
Disaster Assistance
Best for: High school students looking to organize a group of other students under the leadership of the Red Cross to address core needs in your community.
Description: American Red Cross encourages high school students to create and join a Red Cross Club where they’ll organize events like blood drives. The Red Cross helps in frontline disaster situations, so student volunteers help provide resources for these activities.
Keep in mind: Though you won’t yet be on the front line in a disaster, Red Cross experience applies to future careers in medical, military, or firefighting careers.
DIY: Get friends together and find a local blood bank needing donors or volunteers.
Food Assistance
Best for: Since everybody needs to eat, know your efforts help keep someone going.
Details: Start with Feeding America, a national organization that will connect you to food banks near you. These serve as hubs for food donations, then turn around and get food to people or groups that need it.
Excess food arrives from brands such as General Mills, grocery stores like Walmart, and restaurants such as Jersey Mikes. Food banks then donate food to specific grassroots programs at churches, schools, and community groups. Often those who need it shop at a discount.
You’ll sort and pack food. You might also cook or do food prep, such as for school-based meal programs.
Have a driver’s license and access to a car? Meals on Wheels provides the comfort, company, and nutrition seniors need. It serves more than 2.4 million seniors – from 60 to 100+ years old – each year.
You’ll pick up meals from a central location, deliver them to a consistent set of seniors, and say hi while checking in. Just so you know, you don’t stay to eat.
Keep in mind: You’ll serve and interact with a ton of food as a volunteer. Make sure to eat first and bring a snack!
DIY: You and your friends scour your kitchens for excess food, augment it with large-package purchases, and drop things off at a local food bank or food pantry.
Healthcare Volunteering
Best for: Budding healthcare professionals.
Details: The American Cancer Society sponsors ACS On Campus chapters in middle and high schools. Host a Great American Smoke Out event to lower teen smoking rates, one of the biggest causes of cancer. Get involved in advocacy and education around fighting cancer.
Keep in mind: You might find, confirm, or decide against a future career by volunteering in healthcare settings.
DIY: Local hospitals near you likely organize teen volunteer programs. Check specific age and other requirements.
Local Teen Crisis Lines also train and accept volunteers to staff phone and chat lines to support other teens in need of mental health crisis support.
House Building
Best for: Those who relish physical accomplishments and want to build for the future.
Details: Habitat for Humanity builds and improves homes for low-income families in the US and around the world. You can join existing projects or bring your own group. Volunteers literally build for the future, working on housing sites or home improvement needs.
Keep in mind: While you may or may not start with construction or handyperson skills, you’ll definitely become much savvier after these hands-on experiences.
DIY: Build birdhouses to help birds and seniors who would like to host them in their backyards.
International Travel Volunteering
Best for: Have the travel bug? Consider international travel combined with service.
Details: Global Village through Habitat for Humanity builds and repairs houses across five continents to meet safety and liveability standards. Their vision? A world where everyone has a decent place to live. The first step is to join a group planning to go. Then work with Global Village as they run one-week programs around the globe.
Global Volunteers organizes volunteer expeditions to twelve countries, including China, Italy, and Tanzania. High school programs run year-round and “bridge the knowledge gap between academics and real life.”
Volunteering Journeys runs volunteer and travel experiences in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Peru, South Africa, and Costa Rica. Programs range from dentistry to sea turtle and marine.
Keep in mind: Trips abroad to volunteer may or may not cost less than simply going as a tourist. These trips give you a rich perspective along with invaluable experiences. You’ll immerse yourself in the local culture and help to address its problems.
Costs vary but range in the many thousands – you pay for travel and simple accommodations as part of the volunteer package. Do your specific research on what’s included, and how your efforts will help. Even if you’re a teen with a credit card, make sure your efforts are worth the expense to you. Make sure you have a plan to pay the trip off, or, better yet, raise funds in advance of going.
DIY: Look to schools, churches, or colleges for additional travel service opportunities.
Literacy and Reading Assistance
Best for: Booklovers who want to get more kids reading.
Details: Books for Africa collects children’s books, school textbooks from elementary through college, and school supplies. Put together a book drive at your school or go door to door. Ask for donations for mailing costs to a collection point (unless you live in St. Paul, MN or Marietta, GA where you can drop them off in person.) Shipping each book to Africa costs Books for Africa 50 cents, so they appreciate these costs defrayed as well.
Keep in mind: Kids sometimes don't have someone who spends the time they need to read with them. Look around for literacy programs working with younger kids if you’re interested.
DIY: Check your local library for ways to volunteer. You’ll read aloud to kids, sign up kids for reading contests, or organize books.
Organized Service Clubs
Best for: Those wanting a way to do a variety of service projects as part of a social club.
Details: The Boy Scouts of America runs Scouts BSA for young men and women in grades 6 through 12, plus co-ed Venturing and Sea Scouting for ages 14-20. In addition to other fun activities, service projects focus on nature, the community, or assisting the scout's organization itself.
Girl Scouts of America troops, made of young women, meet weekly or every other week for an hour or two. Seniors, in 9th and 10th grade, and Ambassadors, in 11th and 12th grades, get together for activities and events. These include service projects like cleaning up parks, building outdoor basketball courts, and registering neighbors to vote.
You can join or start a Key Club in your high school, sponsored by a local Kiwanis club. These clubs focus on service learning. You might fundraise, read to younger kids, or start a recycling program.
Keep in mind: Talk to others with experiences in these clubs before joining. The specifics of your local club matter, as does your fit with the values of the national organization.
DIY: Some high schools encourage kids to start their own clubs. Group of friends and brainstorm service ideas to fit with everyone’s interests.
Outdoor care and education
Best for: Those of you with boundless energy who like to be outside.
Details: The U.S. National Park Service program, Volunteers-In-Parks, gives teens opportunities “as diverse as the national parks themselves.” You’ll communicate with and educate visitors to the parks. Or go more hands-on, repairing or maintaining trails. Art, museums, and libraries in parks give you the chance to pass on its heritage to the next generation.
Happiest in a garden, lake, river, or wildlife refuge? Look into the US Fish & Wildlife Service volunteer opportunities. Sites around the country need people to help. You’ll help care for, communicate about, and educate visitors on these beautiful natural spaces.
Keep in mind: State parks, perhaps closer to you, need volunteers as well.
DIY: Clean up your local neighborhood, parks, city, or beach.
Special Needs Support
Best for: If you’ve ever felt like you don’t fit in, or want to better understand and assist with the challenges of being differently abled.
Details: Best Buddies, in every state, supports people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). As a buddy, you’ll be paired with someone your age – one with and one without IDD – to get to know each other as friends. Look for a chapter in your middle school, high school, or college. Or consider e-Buddies to connect through an online platform.
Guide Dogs for the Blind does just what it says. It’s the largest guide dog school in North America, and everything they do is free to those without sight who need a dog. Do you live in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Utah, or Washington? Check into being a puppy-raising volunteer through a puppy club in your area.
Also look at Southeastern Guide Dogs, with clubs in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.
The Special Olympics gives children and adults with intellectual disabilities year-round sports training and competitions. It’s life-changing, and you can help.
Keep in mind: Volunteering with or for disabled kids leads to extreme gratitude and a new take on the world.
DIY: Learn sign language and gain a tool to communicate with 70 million deaf and hard-of-hearing people around the world.
Sports Focused Volunteering
Best for: Athletes and just-for-fun movement lovers.
Details: Girls on the Run gets girls in 3rd through 8th grades running. Like to run yourself? Look into helping at a race. Girls gain confidence and life skills, too.
Kids and adults play sports and take classes at 2700 YMCAs around the United States. Your local Y might need coaches or other help with younger kids programs. Local JCCs – there are 350 in the US – often accept teen volunteers as well.
Keep in mind: Kids get excited about learning from not-quite adults like you.
DIY: Ask local elementary or middle schools if they could use a junior coach. It’s a great way to learn hands-on coaching skills, and to pass on your sports enthusiasm.
Teens Helping Younger Kids
Best for: Teens who want to work with and encourage younger kids.
Details: Search for your local Children's Museum, then contact them to see whether they accept teen volunteers. Many do. It’s a chance to learn early childhood education techniques and work with children and families.
Project Linus distributes hand-made blankets, made by you. Blankets provide security, warmth, and comfort to sick or traumatized kids.
Keep in mind: Children will look up to you as a role model.
DIY: Ask if you can help at the local elementary school with homework.
Volunteering Onsite Before College – Summer or Gap Year
Best for: If you’re looking for an immersive, onsite experience with expenses covered and a stipend.
Details: AmeriCorps, for ages 17+ runs various programs. There’s the outdoors, team-based residential community service program, NCCC. Others include poverty-fighting through VISTA, and State and National, the matchmaker program of national service. Reading Partners, based in 10 states, uses AmeriCorp staff to help kids get proficient in reading.
Most full-time and some part-time AmeriCorps programs pay a living allowance which may or may not cover housing, meals, or other expenses. VISTA pays based on this geographically-based schedule, as do other paying programs, which offer 100-200% of these rates. Some programs run year-round, others in the summer or for a limited time.
Keep in mind: Do the math before accepting a role. If your main focus is to raise money for college during the summer or a gap year, there likely will be other, more effective savings options.
DIY: Ask organizations you’ve been volunteering with if they hire pre-college interns, paid or not, and turn your current gig into a full-time summer or gap year role.
Final Thoughts on Volunteer Ideas for Teens
Nothing here that piques your interest? Keep looking for other volunteer ideas for teens. Volunteering invites you to put yourself in another’s shoes, to be grateful for what you have, and to remember that we’re all in it together.
What other volunteer ideas for teens would you add to this list? Have you volunteered using any of these ideas?
Please let us know in the comments below.
