Students under the new diploma system will now have to complete a mandatory 40 hours of community involvement.
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High school students need to complete 40-hour volunteer work because it is mandatory, but 13-year-old Harnoor Gill has given a new meaning to it. The Stewarttown Middle School, Georgetown, student has been volunteering since he was three years old. Today he is in Grade 8 and has already contributed more than 1,000 hours to the community. "The 40-hour community work is just a starting point and not the end," Gill told Focus. "I do not want youth of my community to start thinking about it in Grade 9, instead they can start volunteering at an earlier stage." Dedicating after school hours and weekends, Gill has been playing an important role as a youth volunteer leader by raising environmental awareness of biodiversity, youth matters and fundraising events. |
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In 2010, at the age of 12, Harnoor Gill grade 8 student from Georgetown, decided to establish the "Jean Green Drive" to help the poor and homeless local and international youth by providing them with gently used jeans. He felt that this had the added benefit of helping the environment by conveying the message to 'reuse' in a positive manner. Since then he had collected and given about 200 pairs of jeans to the worldwide youth in need, and especially to the homeless youth.
Simon Harmgardt is a Grade 12 student (at Blakelock High School) whose interest lies in environmental philanthropy. Three years ago he began an initiative called 'Life Cycle'.
The goal of Life Cycle is to save bikes that are destined for the landfill site and to fix them up and provide them to needy people, both locally and in the Third World.
Simon is an Oakville high school student with a rather unusual talent... he juggles. In fact, he turned his unique skill into a 30 minute stunt juggling show that's called STOP (Simon's Tour of Positivity). His show includes juggling knives, balls, pins, rings, the diabolo (similar to a giant yo-yo) and juggling stunts using a unicycle ladders, wobble boards, etc. People of all ages really love watching Simon juggle and many say it's like watching mini fireworks (all that energy and dynamic colours).
2010's fall theme was HALLOWEEN!
Teens Organizing Local Entertainment for Seniors (TOLES) group was co-founded in 2004 by the Harmgardt siblings, Julie, Simon and Andrew. Since its inception in 2004, TOLES has put a smile on the faces of hundreds of Oakville senior citizens.
TOLES' goal is to bridge the multi-generational gap through the world of entertainment. In today's transient society, many adolescents don't have the luxury of living in close proximity to their own grandparents and opportunities to interact with seniors are rather limited. TOLES fills this niche twofold - the teens bask in the seniors caring and warmth while discovering that seniors are a source of living history and the seniors loneliness is alleviated by the exuberance and energy of the youthful, talented group.
Read more: Teens Organizing Local Entertainment for Seniors (TOLES)