Humber Research is pleased to announce that the ground-breaking online student resource Get Your Hours was launched this month.

Get Your Hours is an innovative web platform designed to help high school students meet their volunteer goals. The first of its kind, Get Your Hours connects students in need of volunteer hours with charities in need of volunteers.

As part of the requirements for an Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD), every student who begins secondary school during or after the 1999-2000 school year must complete a minimum of 40 hours of community involvement activities. While previously students had to track years of volunteer work on a piece of scrap paper, Get Your Hours makes the process of youth engagement and volunteer work more exciting, intuitive, and accessible for the internet savvy high school generation. The platform matches students with volunteer opportunities based on their interests, allows students to track their hours online, and receive verification from guidance counselors within their school.

Get Your Hours founder Christiane MacKenzie and faculty member Bernie Monette, Program Coordinator of the Website Development Program, began project development for Get Your Hours in April 2013 after receiving a Colleges Ontario Network for Industry Innovation (CONII) grant. Their challenge was to create an online tool that could be used as a central resource for school boards looking to track and verify students’ volunteer work, as well as help students find more meaningful volunteer opportunities in their community.

Students in the Website Development Program at Humber were hired to design the back end of the platform under the supervision of Bernie Monette. After months of development, networking, and partnerships, the site is being pilot-tested in schools across the Toronto District School Board and the Toronto Catholic District School Board.

Get Your Hours hopes to be ready to hard launch across the province in January 2014.