When 16-year-old Anika Krishnan saw nonprofits struggling during and after the pandemic, she started volunteering through remote opportunities and found that her classmates were interested in her experiences and wanted to find out how they could get involved as well. Hoping to impact her community on a larger level, she recently launched nonprofit Treefish. Her aim is to help teens find volunteer opportunities and to help them further encourage volunteering among friends and family. The app currently lists more than 150 organizations and has around 500 volunteers using the platform.

— Cherie, 24, NY (Cassandra Collective)

Sisters Isabella and Aria Capelli and friend Carolyn Considine joined forces in 2020 to launch Meaningful Teens, an organization that teaches ELL learners English reading, writing, and reading comprehension. After the teen trio had been volunteering as literacy tutors, they realized they could use a system of virtual chats to devise an educational program for fellow students who speak English as a second language. The program has seen remarkable growth since its launch —nearly 2000 teens have joined as volunteer tutors, providing virtual sessions worldwide to students from underserved communities.

— Natasha, 23, MA (Cassandra Collective)

As the oldest and largest service program for high schoolers, the Key Club is not exactly new. In fact, it has quite a history of helping teens get involved in volunteering. Clubs are student-led, where volunteers get a direct say in the kinds of service projects they want to do. High school student members of Key Club perform acts of service in their communities, such as cleaning up parks, collecting clothing, and organizing food drives. They also learn leadership skills by running meetings, planning projects, and holding elected leadership positions at the club, district, and international levels. With nearly 275,000 active members in 1000s of clubs in more than 38 countries, Key Club has never been bigger and continues to expand its global reach.