Across the province, high school students must commit 40 hours of volunteer work in order to graduate.
The Peel District School Board has flyers in its schools detailing all of the things that qualify or do not qualify for volunteer time. These hours are mainly for community and religious programs and charities, and excludes things that provide material gain for the student’s family, displaces paid workers or is dangerous to the student.
Do you think it’s appropriate for students to be granted volunteer hours by politicians, when the students are helping those politicians get elected or re-elected, before or during the election period? Well, this practice is going on and should be stopped, in my opinion.
One local MPP has an open invitation on his political website — which also somehow doubles as his constituency website — to students to participate in his 2011 campaign.
He manages the site and has posted clear instructions — posted last summer before the 2007 provincial election and ongoing until 2011 — for students to contact his campaign office and earn hours towards their high school diploma, helping him get elected.
If you think volunteering to help someone get elected is not in keeping with the Ministry of Education guidelines and the school board’s Your Time Counts process put in place by the Peel Board, or is offensive to the spirit of giving for others, contact your school trustee, the school board, the Ministry of Education and demand that campaign volunteering be specifically named as a non-qualifying activity.
