All students at AGHS require 20 hours of community service to graduate. In addition, any student who completes over 250 hours of service can receive a cord at graduation.

The Give Back 250 Club, a student-run organization on campus, supports this accomplishment by promoting excellence in giving back to the community, with a collective goal of completing 250 hours of service by graduation. 

Whether or not you are working towards 20 or 250 hours, many opportunities are available throughout the year. 

Emanuela Colendich (‘24) has been volunteering since middle school, a task promoted by the AVID program, but now is something enjoyable for her. 

Colendich has acquired over 270 hours from training service dogs in our community.

“I started during the very beginning of Covid, so Freshman year… I found an Instagram account, which was the non-profit organizer,” Colendich said.

The non-profit organization is called “The Service Dog Connection,” where volunteers train these dogs in basic tasks such as “sit” and “stay.”

“We’d meet up at weekly meetings, one or three times a week, and train them with specialized tasks based on the disability they are helping with,” Colendich said. 

After high school, Colendich wishes to continue her education to become a veterinarian. “I love animals, so it helped me to find my passion for what I wanted to do with my career and also learning about different disabilities,” Colendich said.

Colendich believes that it’s beneficial to incentivize community service on campus. “I think it’s learning how to not be so stuck in your head and worrying about yourself but helping other people,” Coldenich said.

Carter Simonich (‘24) has experienced giving back to the community through other opportunities. 

In his sophomore year, Simonich began volunteering for the Central Coast Aquarium, an opportunity discovered on the radio. Over 18 months, he completed over 120 hours of volunteering. 

Simonich decided to dedicate his time out of his love for biology, his desired major in his college. “It sounded like a fun place to be,” Simonich said. “I would go once a week for three or four hours.”

At the aquarium, Carter worked at the gift shop, fed the fish, and oversaw the touch tanks. 

After a while, he switched to a new experience, volunteering at the Arroyo Grande Community Hospital during his junior year.

 “For a while, I did both, but I was at the aquarium for so long, and I needed to free up my schedule a little bit.”

At the hospital, there are a variety of different tasks volunteers can perform. If you work during the week, you’ll find yourself at the front desk, and on weekends, you’ll be with Simonich working in the ER.

“I’ll clean rooms, exchange linens, stock patient fridges, stuff like that,” Simonich said. He works every Saturday for four hours and has already given back 100 hours since he started. 

Simonich is grateful for his ability to help the community. “It has led me to meet new people, make connections, and learn more about myself,” Simonich said. 

Many opportunities are available on the AGHS website, providing a long list of one-time and recurring jobs that students can volunteer for. Jocelyn Martinez (‘25) has pursued one of these opportunities since her Freshman year. 

An active Give Back 250 club member, striving to go above and beyond the minimum 20-hour requirement, Martinez has around 150 hours of volunteer work. 

Martinez works many hours volunteering at the Arroyo Grande Care Center, a nursing home for senior citizens in Arroyo Grande.

As a volunteer, you can expect to be setting up and assisting residents with activities like playing cards or even helping at events where people will sing or hand out food. And some days, it’s just helping with everyday tasks. 

 Enjoying the work, she has been volunteering for the care center since entering high school. Currently, she is employed at the care center.

“I want to go into the medical field, and that’s a nursing center so it was a place where I could experience some patient care, and after having volunteered there so long, I got attached to the residents and people there,” Martinez said. “My plan was to keep volunteering there, but then the activities director  asked me: ‘Do you want to work here?’ I said yeah, and I’ve been working there since last September.”

Before it became a job for her, Martinez volunteered over 80 hours at the care center. She feels the ability to impact the community through volunteering.

 “I would say that I’ve helped the residents. I feel like a lot of them feel like people don’t care about them anymore because their family has put them there, but I think they just feel better knowing there’s somebody there,” Martinez said.

Volunteering has shown Martinez that stepping out into the community can be beneficial. Working at this nursing home has brought her steps closer to her goal of becoming a Physician Assistant. 

“To be a physician assistant, you need patient care experience like a job, and something like that would be a CNA, my job right now has told me: ‘Once you turn 18, you can apply to our CNA program,’” Martinez said.

“Even if it’s just twenty hours, I think it does help a lot of people because it’s opening opportunities to show you what your interests are or what you might be able to get into later on.”

In addition to these volunteers, Maddison Davis (‘26) has been completing community service since her Freshman year. Davis is active in the Give Back 250 Club and has over 120 hours, she found most of these opportunities in the school newsletter. Davis received the most hours from helping out at the Turtle and Tortoise Rescue, alongside other animal rescues at Rancho de los Animales.

At both animal rescues in Arroyo Grande, Davis performs tasks such as feeding the animals and taking them on walks. “They just have a bunch of turtles and other animals,” Davis said. As well as Turtles and Tortoises, you can work with chickens and even goats. 

Davis feels influenced to give back to our community as she wishes to receive the honorary cord at graduation for students who’ve completed 250 hours of service. 

“I think it’s good because it helps people realize what they can do in the community, where the community needs help, and what they could do outside of high school,” Davis said. “If they find something they think is fun, they could keep doing it.”