High school teens need spending money and service hours. Wilton businesses, organizations and individuals need workers and volunteers.

The Wilton High School Job Board and Community Service Board offer great opportunities to help everyone find what they’re looking for.

WHS junior Cora Huff created the WHS Job Board and Community Service Board in 2021 when she discovered how hard it was to find community service opportunities. She realized that there were no resources that provided information on community service opportunities.

“While I was working on my Girl Scout Silver Award, I reached out to many organizations to see if there was any way that we could help them. I found it to be very time consuming and tedious to find the right person to talk to,” Huff recalled.

Eventually, an organization suggested Huff’s troop could make sensory boxes for kids with special needs. Not long after, COVID hit and once again Huff wanted to find a community service project to help people at home.

“Again, I found it very difficult to find opportunities to volunteer. When I noticed, how difficult it was to find opportunities to help people, I realized that other teens were likely having the same issue,” she said. That’s when she created the Community Service Board as a solution to connect teens with nonprofits and local businesses.

Huff partnered with the high school to create the resource for her fellow students to more easily and quickly find volunteer service opportunities in Wilton.

After the Community Service Board was doing well, Cora noticed that some opportunities also wanted to offer payment. This sparked her idea to start the Wilton High School Job Board. She again partnered with the school to build another resource that would provide information on jobs, internships, and mentorship opportunities.

Huff said the key to the boards’ success is that they allow students to see a wide range of opportunities all at once and offers them a choice, without being time-consuming for students to research potential organizations and opportunities. For organizations and employers, the boards provides a platform to publicize their opportunities to a large high school student population within a couple of minutes.

On the Job Board, there have been jobs ranging from babysitters to administrative assistants to social media managers. On the Community Service Board, there have been opportunities ranging from club leaders to tutors to animal care. 

“Teens are great employees and volunteers because we are eager to learn. Working and volunteering are new experiences to high schoolers and when they find an opportunity they are very interested in, they can become very passionate,” Huff said. “[It] is a refreshing change of pace from school and gives them a chance to learn something new.”

Anyone looking for student volunteers or employees can post their opportunities on the the boards either by filling out a community service opportunity form or job opportunity form on the Wilton High School Website under Student Resources. Students can find both boards on the Wilton High School Website under Student Resources as well.

Feedback has been great, Huff said.

“There have been over 200 opportunities posted! Many of the opportunities have also been looking for multiple high schoolers. There has been lots of positive feedback from employers who are loving their high school employees. Recently, I received an email about how one student was doing so well with their unpaid internship from the job board that the employer wanted to promote them to a paid internship,” she said.

Huff plans to continue running the boards through the rest of her junior and senior years and hopes to be able to pass it off to another student when she graduates.