Students struggle to get service hours as the COVID-19 pandemic proceeds, and the deadlines for National Honors Society (NHS) and Cum Laude service hours are getting closer and closer. The deadline for Cum Laude is Feb. 1, 2021, and the NHS deadline is the last week of April 2021

Cum Laude is the ultimate way for a school to acknowledge excellence in academics and the engagement of students in their community. NHS is a society in high school that shows students have good grades and they give back to their community.

Before the pandemic, service hours were much easier to obtain, and there were many options.

Jeff Barry the sponsor of NHS said, “We had students go to churches and Feed My Starving Children and work with the park district and help out at the elementary schools.” 

Many students who work toward achieving Cum Laude would be out in the community all the time volunteering. 

Some students would “go and would work at Save A Pet [or] any nonprofit [or do things] for the church,” said principal Dan Landry, who administrates the Cum Laude program with associate principal Barb Georges.

That’s what Cum Laude and NHS was like before COVID-19, but things changed once COVID-19 hit.

 “We used to have 50 hours, and I believe we’re asking students to complete 20 hours this year… since a lot of the organizations that we’d be helping aren’t holding events where they work with the public or engaging with the public, our students can’t get the hours that they need,” says Barry. 

Things have not just changed with NHS, but Cum Laude has changed with hour cuts too. Landry and Georges have been working on making these difficult times easier for the students to get those hours.

Coming to the conclusion that “the volunteerism [is the hard part] because it’s… hard to find. So what we did with the graduating classes, we reduced the number of hours required from 50 to 25,” said Landry.

Students are the ones that are trying to get these service hours, and they are nervous about how COVID-19 would affect their hours and how they would get them. They feel that the reduction of hours puts them in a good place.

Senior Christine Cave is in NHS and is striving for Cum Laude. Cave said, “I think all my friends are stressed out and … less motivated to even try and volunteer since it’s … pretty hard now and … I don’t really know if people are going to commit to trying… [to] get their service hours since COVID and … their parents restrict them.” 

Cave and a couple of other members of NHS are coming to gather to do a  “ toy drive [to donate to kids who are more in need] and just donating toys or like raising money. Even for people to like buy … toys, I think, that could help a lot,” said Cave.

Before you give up hope on obtaining hours, there are still opportunities out there for you to get those hours. Feed My Starving Children is still open and providing a safe environment.

Libertyville’s Feed My Starving Children site manager Dana McCarthy said, “Well, all our food is packed by volunteers, and all the food is paid for by volunteers so having volunteers not only come in a pack of food but also continue to donate, is what makes it possible for us to pack this food.” 

NHS is getting creative and thinking of new ideas for students to get those hours too.

“We’ve had to shift from me bringing opportunities to students to students thinking about how to develop service projects of their own, so that’s kind of the phase that we’re in right now,” says Barry. 

Volunteering is important, and it is not just for the hours to get those titles, but it is about giving a lot of yourself and your heart and soul to the community. Sometimes we get so caught up in our own stories that we fail to see that we are living around other people, so getting out into the community can help us make it a more positive place.