The 40 Volunteer Hours: What Counts, What Doesn't, and How to Not Waste Them

The short answer

Forty hours, they can start the summer before Grade 9, and your principal has to approve them. That is the requirement. It is separate from the 30 credits and separate from the literacy requirement — a student can pass every course and still not graduate.

The number is the easy part. The part that costs students real time is the list of things that do not count, because nobody checks it until after the hours are done.

What counts

The province gives examples rather than a closed list, and they are broader than most people assume: hospitals, non-profits, veterans' organisations, government institutions, Indigenous communities, religious and cultural events, and school nutrition programs — the last of those during breaks or spare periods.

Two things follow from that. First, a spare period is usable time. Second, “volunteering” does not have to mean a shift at a charity; running something at a community event counts, and it is usually more interesting.

What does not count

This is the section worth reading twice. Each of these is explicitly ruled out.

• A requirement of a class or course. If a course already asks for it, it cannot also count. This catches co-op placements and service-learning assignments.
• Anything during instructional time. Lunch and spare periods are fine. A period you are timetabled into is not.
• Work normally done for wages. If the organisation would otherwise pay somebody to do that job, it does not count — whether or not you are paid.
• Household chores or personal recreation. Helping at home and your own hobbies are out.
• Court-ordered community service. A separate thing entirely, and it does not count towards the diploma.
• Operating a vehicle, power tools or scaffolding. Ruled out on safety grounds.
• Administering medication or handling designated substances. Also ruled out on safety grounds.
• Handling securities, or work in a regulated trade. Out.
• Anything that promotes discrimination or harassment, or puts anyone at risk. Out.

The two that catch people most often are the first and the third. A co-op placement cannot double as volunteer hours, because it is part of a course the student is enrolled in — co-op earns credits instead, and it earns them generously. And “work normally done for wages” is about the job, not about whether you were paid: if the organisation would otherwise hire somebody to do it, doing it for free does not convert it into community involvement.

Who has to approve it, and when

The principal, working from the school board's process. Boards keep a list of pre-approved activities; if what the student wants to do is not on it, the principal decides, in consultation with supervisory officers.

Get the approval first. The approval step exists partly for insurance — boards have to make sure participants are covered — which means an activity done without it is not simply unrecorded, it may not be approvable after the fact.

If the student is under 18, a parent or guardian signs the record of hours, helps choose the activities, and is expected to be in contact with the supervising organisation.

The certificate almost nobody mentions

Going past 40 hours earns a Minister's Certificate:

• Bronze — 50 to 99 hours.
• Silver — 100 to 199 hours.
• Gold — 200 hours or more.

For a student assembling a scholarship or university application, this matters more than the hours themselves. “Completed the requirement” says nothing, because everyone who graduates did. A Gold certificate is a specific, province-issued, verifiable claim — and 200 hours over four years is about an hour a week.

How to actually do this well

The requirement is designed as a floor, and treating it as one is a waste. Three things make the difference.

• Start in the summer before Grade 9. Four summers and four school years is a great deal of time. Grade 12 alone, alongside applications and final marks, is not.
• Pick one thing and stay. Forty hours scattered across eight organisations produces nothing anyone can write a reference about. The same forty hours at one place produces an adult who knows the student's name and will vouch for them — which is worth more than the hours.
• Do something visible in your own town. It is easier to sustain, easier to explain in an interview, and more likely to lead somewhere.

That last point is why Serve First exists: a young person doing something obviously useful where they live, with the hours logged properly as they go. It is a real project, not a placement to be endured.

Where this fits in the rest of the diploma

The 40 hours are one of three requirements that are not credits — the other two being the literacy requirement and, for anyone who started Grade 9 in 2020-21 or later, two online learning credits. The full diploma guide lays out all of them, including the 17-versus-18 compulsory credit change and the financial literacy requirement that takes effect this school year.

If the real question underneath this one is what your teenager should be aiming at rather than how to tick the box, the free career test takes ten minutes and stores nothing, and the guide to what comes after high school lays out every option with what it costs. If it has gone past reading and into worry, this is what one-to-one coaching involves.