Terminate mandatory volunteering for Ontario students

As stated in Ontario Secondary School, Grade 9 to 12: Program and Diploma Requirements, 1999 (OSS) every student who begins secondary school during or after the 1999-2000 school year must complete a minumum of 40 hours of community involvement activities as part of the requirements for an Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD).

We feel that encouraging children to volunteer in the community is terrific, but making it mandatory for them to do so is harsh. We feel that volunteering is a choice, not a requirement.

Dictionary.com has defined community service as "Services VOLUNTEERED by
individuals or an organization to benefit a community or its institutions."
We agree with this definition, and in the sense that community service should be done under one's free will, and we also believe that it should not be done as a requirement of receiving your high school diploma.

We, the undersigned hereby petition that the Ontario Ministry of Education remove the requirement of mandatory community service from the Ontario Secondary School Diploma requirements.