Service-learning actively engages participants in meaningful and personally relevant service activities.

Service-learning projects work best when they fit the ages and developmental abilities of the participants, include interesting and engaging service activities, explore the context of the underlying societal issues the service addresses, and address needs that are important to the community being served.

Effective service-learning is an integral part of the learning process. It has clear learning goals that are aligned with the school curriculum or purpose of the extracurricular program. Learning becomes experiential and applied, deepening students’ understanding of the material, how it’s used, and why it’s important.

Throughout the process, reflection is the key to growth and understanding. Young people use critical and creative thinking to ensure that the learning makes sense and has meaning for them. Reflection activities should be used before, during, and after the service experience to assess where students are in the learning process, help them internalize the learning, provide opportunities for them to voice concerns and share feelings, and evaluate the project.

Service-learning promotes an understanding of all forms of diversity and fosters mutual respect among participants. It helps develop interpersonal skills in group decision-making and conflict resolution. Students learn to identify and analyze different points of view to gain understanding of multiple perspectives.

Young people are active partners in a service-learning project, with strong voices in identifying community needs and planning service activities. They also play active roles in the evaluation of the project and its impact on the community. This nurtures youth ownership of the project, which in turn empowers young people to take control of their learning, develop leadership skills, and take their places as valuable, decision-making members of their communities.

Service-learning builds partnerships between young people and the broader community. Partnerships can involve not only those being served but also businesses, community organizations, social service agencies, and other groups that share the project's goals. By bringing people together in collaboration, these partnerships can bridge intergenerational, ethnic, and cultural gaps; provide young people with strong role models; and strengthen community infrastructures.

To assess the quality of service-learning and monitor success, service-learning participants collect evidence of their progress toward goals and results from multiple sources throughout the service-learning experience. They share the evidence of their accomplishments with the broader community, including policy-makers and education leaders, to deepen service-learning understanding and ensure that high quality practices are sustained.

Service-learning should have sufficient duration and intensity to address community needs and meet the goals of the project. In other words, it should allow youth enough time to investigate community needs, prepare for service, take action, reflect repeatedly on the project, demonstrate their learning and the impacts of the project, and celebrate the achievement. Service-learning works best when it is conducted during concentrated blocks of time across a period of several weeks or months.