The Relationship of Institutions to Teen Volunteering Religious institutions and schools are the primary institutions through which teens get involved in volunteering. Through their church, they volunteered for religious purposes and general human services. Through their schools they got involved in activities ranging from the environment to the arts to health services to youth development. Regardless of how they became involved, however, over eight out of ten were asked by someone at these institutions to volunteer. Volunteer Behavior and Characteristics of Teens Who Were Asked To Volunteer Even though teens strongly preferred that they be allowed to choose service activities voluntarily, they do not feel strongly if community service should be required.
Schools have a major impact on certain benefits that teens reported are derived from volunteering.
About 36 percent of teen volunteers whose school offered a course requiring community service reported that they took such a course. These students were far more likely to report that the benefits they derived from their volunteering included learning how to solve community problems, understanding more about good citizenship, becoming more aware of programs in their community, and learning more about how government and voluntary organizations work. They also learned to understand people that were different than themselves. Religious institutions have a profound association with the likelihood that young people will build the habits of not only volunteering, but, particularly, giving. Volunteer participation increased among young people based on their frequency of attendance at religious services, from 43 percent among those who never attended services to 74 percent among those who attended weekly.