The University launched a new Web site Monday to make it easier for students to participate in Michelle Obama’s community service challenge.
The new site will eventually allow students, faculty, staff and trustees to log service hours and find service opportunities, but currently only provides forms to submit hours to the Office of Community Service, according to the site. The online logging service will be available in November.
The site also outlines what types of service will count towards the challenge – including direct service for nonprofits, charity fundraisers, charity runs and walks, pro-bono professional services and service-related Federal Work-study hours – and which types will not. That list includes paid employment, religious or political work, internships that do not provide a direct service to the community and non-service university-related events, like working at Commencement.
The first lady pledged in September to deliver the 2010 Commencement address if GW students complete 100,000 hours of community service by May 1.
The service guidelines were established under the Service Challenge Advisory Committee, led by Vice President Lorraine Voles. Michael Akin, a member of the task force, said he was pleased with the final results.
“Since the First Lady issued her challenge to GW, this group has been working diligently to establish service guidelines based on national standards and to ensure that we have good infrastructure in place for tracking and reporting service hours,” Akin said in an e-mail. “I believe the clear guidelines, new serve.gwu.edu Web site, and the soon-to-be-launched VolunteerMatch application give us the tools we need to meet this challenge.”
The University partnered with VolunteerMatch, an organization that partners volunteers with more than 70,000 nonprofits, to create the service Web site. The service guidelines were based on federal service definitions that schools on the President’s Community Service Honor Roll use.