Jones College Prep Principal Kerry Dolan is launching a new initiative to give Jones students more volunteer opportunities around the school.

Dolan launched the application form for her new Volunteer Corps initiative in a recent newsletter, opening it up to all Jones students who want to be more involved within the school community.

“The Volunteer Corps is an effort to get students together to more effectively be the face and voice of Jones,” said Dolan. “I think that student leadership is something that we could do better at in terms of having students more visible and active at some of these events, because students are really the heartbeat and the reason that this school exists.”

The Volunteer Corps will serve in place of the Eagle Ambassador program that was originally planned going into the school year.

“As the school year started, it became clear that our school level events were going in a new direction under our new administration,”  said Jones Counselor and previous co-head of the Eagle Ambassador program Brian Coleman. “As that became clear, in consultation with administration, it became clear that it made more sense for them to take a lead on the program during the school year.”

Although Coleman and other Eagle Ambassador co-head Hope Stimac will no longer be in charge of student volunteering at school-year events, the two will still be in charge of summer events, specifically Freshman Connection.

“We will continue to support Freshman Connection,” said Stimac. “We will be recruiting students to help us support Freshman Connection later on this school year.”

The Volunteer Corps initiative is currently in the early stages, as students continue to sign up and as Dolan and her administration iron out the details.

“I created the Google Form for student signups, and I’m going to be looking at our calendar of events for the year and identifying where we would need student volunteers,” said Dolan. “There will also probably be initial training, or a prep meeting for students, just because not everyone has run a tour of the building, so just doing some quick overview of expectations and what available supports are there for the students too.”

Dolan wanted to give all Jones students the opportunity to volunteer at these big events, compared to previous years where it would be exclusive to certain groups and clubs.

“Last year, National Honors Society handled Open House, and NHS is amazing, but it is not all of Jones,” said Dolan. “We have a lot of really talented students who either don’t make it into NHS, or are just not a part of it yet like underclassmen. So by expanding it to be the Jones Volunteer Corps and not just one or two student groups, we’re also able to open it up to students in affinity groups who can speak more to their personal experience in terms of reflecting and creating space for their own culture.”

Initial student response to the program  have been positive overall.

“I did have one student reach out because they were really excited about the initiative and weren’t sure how to sign up,” said Dolan. “Right now, we’ve got almost 100 students signed up.”

Dolan is planning for the Volunteer Corps’ first school-year event to be at this year’s Open House on October 19th.

“Student volunteers will probably be here from about 9 am to 4 pm,” said Dolan. “We’ll have some folks stationed on floors to answer questions, particularly students who speak secondary languages. And then we’ll also have students leading building tours and just kind of helping with traffic control.”

The Volunteer Corps is intended to give Jones students more opportunities to better engage with the community and to create a positive school image.

“It’s much more exciting to hear from a student than a parent,” said Dolan. “Students who come in are going to be more excited about Jones.”