A Call to Action

Students from Quest High School, in Humble Texas, are informing their community about service learning, while organizing events in order to inspire local volunteerism and community building.

As a part of their highly anticipated Senior Exhibition, students from Quest High School, an Houston Annenberg Challenge Beacon School, in Humble ISD, are required to take social action in their community. Given an entire semester, the students must form groups and conduct multiple interviews with professional contacts. While most groups in the Quest High School class of 2002 are addressing national issues such as minorities, rape, medicine, and the quest for beauty, one group decided to focus upon the need for more volunteers in their local community. Sarah Oubre, Jeremy Stutes, and Greg Seward have not only researched many aspects of this issue, they are doing something about it.

SPECIVIC EVENT INFORMATION:
   

Take Action!
Volunteer Night 2002
April 2, 2002
6:30-9:00pm
Humble Civic Center
Ballroom 1

The following documents are speeches that these students presented in front of their peers about how they will make a difference in their community:

Sarah Oubre
Social Action Plan:

   In my four years of high school, including the remaining part of this semester, I will conservatively" have done an excess of 4,000 hours of community service. At first glance this number sounds outrageous; however after the figures are worked out, it makes perfect sense. 1000 hours each year, divided by 365.25 days, equals around 2.74 hours every day. 2 hours and 45 minutes each day is not much at all.
   President George W. Bush, arguably the most powerful man on Earth, in his State of the Union Address on January 29, 2002 said, My call tonight is for every American to commit at least two years, 4,000 hours over the rest of your lifetime, to the service of your neighbors and your nation." After he made this statement, many media sources stated that it would be almost impossible for the majority of Americans to do that many hours of service.
   It is not impossible. I have already done it. I have learned, from my research that service learning is something that many people are mis-or un-informed about. Society does not realize how profound service is and the benefits for everyone involved are amazing. I have also learned that there is a service-learning movement in the nation now. My goal is that our community will become informed about service learning through our social action plan and begin to internalize service.
        Our social action plan is a 3-fold event, 1) Volunteer Night, which logistically looks like college night, where local secondary and college-age students can investigate volunteer opportunities in our community. Hopefully each of the senior groups will have a booth to promote you individual service organizations. The second event is a seminar on service learning in the classroom for educators and finally we are gathering members for the National Service Learning Partnership and through these memberships our community and school district will be highlighted nationally.
   Personally, to say a large percentage of my life is devoted to service" is an understatement; the truth is the core of my life is service. My subtopic is service learning in education and through my research, I have been able to make national contacts. This project has allowed me to discover one of my passions; I want to work for a national service learning organization. In conclusion, with people like President Bush making a call for the nation to serve, society will begin to respond in mass numbers.

4,000 hours. Change is easy. How will you help?

Jeremy Stutes
Social Action Plan Speech

     In his state of the union address, President Bush encouraged all Americans to complete the equivalent of 2 years of volunteering in their local communities, over the rest of their life. While most people do not have any moral objection to volunteerism, a big problem with this concept is that the general populous does not know when, where, and how to help out. The media and other forms of communication technology can provide an outlet for the dissemination of information relating to events and opportunities available within a specific community, or, on a larger scale. Still, these systems do not allow an individual interested in volunteering to directly explore the diversity of non-profit organizations and opportunities available within his or her own local community. In order to provide this opportunity, my senior group is working to unite the public with local non-profit organizations and charities in our area.
    The first stage of this process, which requires our choosing of an appropriate venue, is already complete. The Humble Civic Center has donated a large ballroom, in which we can host our event on April 2, 2002. We are now working to invite local service-oriented organizations to participate in this local activity. Once we have the participation of community partners, we will begin to work on drawing in our focus audience: the community.
     We will be using the media and various technologies to gain public interest. Besides utilizing the usual pathways for information dissemination, we will also be spreading the word to people through the communication networks already in place within our school district. We plan to host an educational workshop for teachers in the Humble ISD Board Room on March 4. The workshop will focus upon service learning in the classroom. To encourage educators to attend, we will offer them the opportunity to obtain district required personal development hours. It is our hope that educators will inform students and friends about Volunteer Night following the workshop.
    My specific topic for my research paper revolves around the effects of the Information Age on citizenship in community. I will compare the resulting movements of social action and social withdraw. In addition, I will look deeply into how people receive information and how community is established. Surely, my feelings about my topic will be impacted by my Social Action Plan. I am certain that as a result, I will learn how to be visible, active, and even manipulative, in order to achieve the results that we all desire.

Greg Seward
Social Action Plan Speech

     Millions of homeless people, destructive skyscraper-sized flames, refugees, and war-stricken countries might send amazing mental images to the front of your mind, but whats really amazing are the countless people who volunteer in order to try and resolve those problems.
     Our groups topic, as we have already presented to you, is about American cultures need to help each other. Since our topic is already related to volunteerism, you can imagine that it was relatively simple to conceive our social action plan.
     To refresh your memories concerning the details of our social action plan, Id like to break it down for you. We have 3 parts to our SAP, two of them being organized public events.
     The first public event is open to teachers who want to learn more about service learning and how to implement it in the classroom. It is organized by us but will be primarily presented by a small panel of speakers that we are currently assembling. Because of the educational nature of this speaking event, the attending teachers will also be eligible to receive continuing education credits that will also act as an incentive to come to the event.
     The second public event is going to be set up something like the annual Humble ISD College Night that you are all familiar with. We are forming contacts with local service organizations and will ask them to come and set up a booth where they can distribute information on how they can help that individual organization. Our target audience is going to be secondary and college-level students who are looking for new ways to collect community service hours, either as a class or service-club requirement.
     The third project is a partnership with the National Service Learning Partnership, thanks to Mrs. Kim Huseman. We are organizing all of the active service-learning-involved people in our area, including all students at Quest High School and all students who attend our second event, in an effort to support the NSLP and social action on a national scale.
     This mixture of narrow, local social action and wide, national social action is like throwing a stone in a near-stagnant service-learning pond. Were not going to be able to change the world, but we can definitely make a large contribution locally and nationally with our plan.
     As far as this relates to me, Im gaining invaluable resources in the areas of volunteerism, organizing, and service learning. While our plan isnt going to inform me on how to volunteer at Jesse H. Jones park, where I have volunteered for a year in the past, it may inform 10 or 20 other people that werent even aware of the opportunity to volunteer at the park. That spreading of information and of passing on what we know about how to contribute to the community is, at least to me, much more valuable than working at the park myself and is definitely what I like most about our plan.

Info/Contacts:

Quest High School
18901 Timber Forest Dr.
Humble, TX 77346
Main: 281-641-7300
Fax: 281-641-7417
Principal: Dr. Cecilia Hawkins
Ass't. Principal: Mr. Marlon Farr

more about Quest High School:

http://www.humble.k12.tx.us/QHS_profile.htm

281-641-7306
Lawrence Kohn Ph.D.
Program Specialist

more about service learning:

281-641-7337
Kim Huseman
QHS Service Learning Coordinator

more about senior exhibitions:

281-641-7362
Debbie McIntyre
Senior Group Advisor

more about this specific group:

QHSseniors@hotmail.com
Group e-mail address

Sarah Oubre
Community/Communications Representative
713-501-6343
eap_nevermore@hotmail.com

Jeremy Stutes
Public Relations Representative
281-852-7076
stujer2@hotmail.com

Greg Seward
Business Representative
713-410-6541