The teams spend most of their time off-site engaged in community development and service projects. They work at various locations throughout the week depending on where particular service projects or community partners might be located. The teams spend some time at our centre for educational workshops, special projects, access to resources, and for meetings.

Community projects and partners vary each time we run a program and are different for each team. They generally focus on key areas of community need: education, homelessness and poverty relief, environmental protection/renewal, and community development.

Youth participants may be working with children, assisting seniors, developing environmental education activities, delivering violence prevention programming, supporting people with disabilities, organizing a popular theatre initiative, etc. Some projects involve youth participants providing direct service to clients and other projects involve youth participants planning and developing a special initiative, such as a community event or workshop or educational resource.

The service projects for each team are usually set up in advance before the program begins. Previous community partners (agencies or organizations) are consulted as well as potential new partners in order to organize a suitable range of projects as well as a feasible weekly schedule. In our “Experience This!” full-time program, individual youth participants have the opportunity to set up their own placements for their weekly Personal Development Projects.

We organize a wide range of educational workshops and activities for development of:

• life skills
• self-improvement
• team development
• career and job skills
• for greater understanding of community issues/needs
• and to better inform our service work in the community.

Workshops explore a variety of topics including:

• diversity and anti-oppression
• assertiveness
• effective communication skills
• conflict management
• anger management
• mental health/illness
• budgeting and money management
• networking and job interview skills.

Youth participate actively in the interactive learning opportunities throughout the program.

89% of program graduates of Serve! succeed at achieving their educational and career goals upon completion of our programs With the support of Serve!, Team Members go on to complete their high school education, pursue post-secondary education/training and/or establish themselves in the workplace in areas such as: community work, working with children or youth, health care, restaurant business or hospitality, teaching/education, environmental work, public transportation, arts and culture, administration, outreach, retail business, and more!