How does one calculate volunteer hours?

[dew024]

I took a mission trip to Guatemala in which I spent a week in a village helping out kids.

How do I calculate that into my volunteering hours? Do I just provide estimated hours? I am trying to be as thorough as possible.

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[LizzyM]

Do not write 168 hours. Estimate how many hours each day you were helping kids, sum the number of hours per day over the week and there you have it!

 

[chilly_md]

The easiest method would be the leave off the mission trip entirely. These are often voluntourism. Based on what you shared in another post, you do not need to worry about figuring out details like hours right now since you are a ways away from applying.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

How were you helping kids and not adults, is this for an educational mission working with students in a classroom? A description would be nice, but I agree that unless you were doing this for 8 hours a day, calculate the actual time you were face to face with students.

Do not include time your spent fundraising for your journey.

 

[Holland]

Do not write 168 hours. Estimate how many hours each day you were helping kids, sum the number of hours per day over the week and there you have it!

Semi-related question: a couple of my volunteer positions keep a log, so I put my exact hours on my application resulting in a non-rounded number. It also happened to be JUST over 500 at the time of input, so I could imagine someone thinking that I intentionally volunteered just enough to cross that landmark. Am I reading too much into this?

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Semi-related question: a couple of my volunteer positions keep a log, so I put my exact hours on my application resulting in a non-rounded number. It also happened to be JUST over 500 at the time of input, so I could imagine someone thinking that I intentionally volunteered just enough to cross that landmark. Am I reading too much into this?

Yes. You are overthinking this.