Students raise money for charity through homework help program

Homework Help for Charity (HHC) is an organization started by McMaster students in the summer of 2020. They match volunteer student tutors with k-12 students to provide accessible online tutoring sessions during the pandemic. In place of having a fixed fee for their service, families are asked to make a donation of any amount to a charity of their choice to encourage k-12 students to be socially engaged with causes that they care about.

In honour of National Volunteer Week, we caught up with HHC team to learn more about their program and how it has evolved over the past year.

What sparked the idea for a virtual tutoring service?

Our co-founders, who are students themselves, recognized that online schooling may pose as an unprecedented stressor for students of all ages. Unfortunately, even before the pandemic, not all families are able to provide the same academic support for their children due to financial, geographical, or physical restraints. HHC originated as an idea to alleviate some of these inequalities in our society by providing accessible online tutoring for all students, including those who may not be able to otherwise afford tutoring.

How many student tutors are on the team?

There are 24 tutors and seven executives currently on the HHC team.

Why did you decide to implement a pay-it-forward aspect to your service

Paying it forward provided an opportunity for HHC tutees to engage in social issues that they personally care about. Tutees can redirect the funds that normally would have gone towards tutoring fees to support causes that are important to them.

While our ultimate mission is to promote education accessibility, we recognize that families who may have difficulty accessing academic opportunities may also experience challenges in other aspects of their lives (e.g. shelter, food security). In other words, the inequalities that we see in our society do not necessarily act independently of each other. Thus, our students are encouraged to donate to any charity that they want, not solely those pertaining to educational causes.

What, if anything, has surprised you about Homework Help for Charity?

We were surprised by how quickly HHC took off and how big it has grown over the past two semesters. HHC originally started last summer as just two students entering their last year of undergraduate study with a nebulous idea about an initiative to provide online tutoring. It then evolved into an established organization with a fantastic team of executives, tutors, students, parents and partner charities.

How can other students get involved?

We will be entering our third wave of volunteer recruitment in the next week. During the summer, we will also be recruiting a new executive team for the 2021-2022 school year. Applications can be found on our Facebook page and Instagram account.

Anything else you want people to know?

Over the past school year, our students have collectively donated over $1,000 to various charitable causes. We have also recently entered a partnership with Neighbour to Neighbour, a charity that works to improve the quality of life for Hamilton families for mutual promotion.

We’ve seen an influx of students requesting tutoring services from British Columbia so we are collaborating with students at the University of British Columbia to expand the program in that area.

HHC’s trained tutors can provide K-12 students with feedback on essays, help with reading comprehension, assist with understanding math and physics and much more!

To sign-up for a tutoring session, you can register via the form found on our website here: http://homeworkhelpforcharity.square.site/