Teenagers have been a large and growing source of volunteers in the United States for the past decade. Unfortunately, churches have lagged behind community agencies in recognizing this incredible resource.

Several years ago, I was the director of the Volunteer Center of Boulder County. I became concerned that we had not been successful in recruiting teens. We formed a task force on teen recruitment to deal with this challenge. It was headed by one of Boulder’s most respected and well-loved high school counselors, Dorothy Rupert. Dorothy called a meeting with about 100 teens and asked them why they weren’t volunteering. They replied that none of the agencies would give them anything important to do, because they didn’t trust them to do it right.

Our center then did extensive work with community agencies to help them design meaningful volunteer opportunities for teens. The young people responded enthusiastically. We found it was vital to have the right person (in this case, Dorothy) to recruit them. They knew, trusted, and loved her. As the program grew, Dorothy added more teen recruiters to her team.

The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) released a report in 2003 on youth volunteering. (For the full report, see www.civicyouth.org). Among its findings:

• Young people generally report higher levels of volunteering than adults.
• About half of young volunteers engage in episodic volunteering (that’s what summer volunteering is!)
• Three-quarters of high school seniors reported doing some sort of volunteer work in 2001.

Today’s teenagers are interested and involved, and churches need to get more creative in how they get teenagers to volunteer in their churches. Church leadership and parents spend lots of time thinking about how to program for teens. Now the focus needs to be on how to plan with them. This is an important distinction. So many churches make the mistake of assigning youth groups all of the least-desirable tasks of the congregation. They don’t ask teens what they want to do, they tell them what they’ll do—and it turns teens off. Just like adults, teens respond best when they’re included in the development of plans.

To create successful teen volunteer programs, remember these three critical elements:

• Give them meaningful work.
• Find adults kids love and respect to recruit teens.
• Plan with teens, not for them.

Marlene Wilson has written and trained on volunteer issues for 35 years. More than a quarter of a million people have attended her workshops.

Copyright © 2004, Group Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.