Volunteer
High School volunteering with real impact.
Join a team composed of other high school students, get a lotta community service hours for it, qualify for a Presidential Service Award, and be part of a real non-profit with real results.
get your hands in
the future of remote learning
volunteer at Alterna and get to make a real impact in your community and those we are active in. Connect with local schools to bring computer science into their classrooms, design our next big marketing campaign, or get to make your own courses with us: and that’s just the beginning.
your time,
your place
school can be tough: that’s why we work with an asynchronous model. that means that most of your contribution can be done on your schedule. whenever you want, wherever you want it to be.
plus, unlimited breaks and time offs give you the confidence we won’t disturb you when you are enjoying life.
(good) lovebombing
our volunteers average more than 100 community service hours per year. plus, volunteers can get endorsements, and as many signed letters of recommendations as they want for colleges, programs, scholarships, and employers upon request.
most are eligible to request a letter 6 months after joining, but exclusions can be made for our top performers 😉
a team nice and sweet
our team of teenagers is warm and welcoming – we are like a professional football team: we jump to action and ask for help when things go wrong. plus, we get to chill together and learn new things together.
Benefits
we like to spoil our lil volunteers, regardless of what role they play in our team. all of our volunteers are eligible to receive:
Volunteer / School / Life Balance
We give you the tools so you can decide when to allocate time for volunteering, school, and life.
Professional Skill Development
Work on a team, share ideas, create amazing things, and grow both your soft and hard skills for the workforce.
Alumni Network
Once you leave Alterna you can join our Alumni Network that can support you for your professional and academic pursuits.
and that’s not all they get. view all benefits here →
Meet our team
We are high schoolers just like you: we run Alterna on our free time, with love.
Sebastián Camargo MarÃn
Founder & Director
Tampa, FL
Miafaye Herrera
Chief Operations Officer
Miami, FL
Lesly Bacallao
Head of Data Refinement
Miami, FL
Gloria Carrillo Zapata
Head of Design & Aesthetics
Tlalpan, Mexico City
We’ve collaborated with some of the best schools in the American continent. Yours could be next!
questions, answers
what’s Alterna?
Institute Alterna is a 503(c) non-profit run by high school students. Our mission is to enable other students around the globe to learn how to code through interactive workshops, learning materials, and more stuff which we distribute to our communities in South Florida and Mexico. Plus, we develop cool learning materials for everyone to access online.
who can volunteer?
at this time only middle and high school students may join our volunteering ventures. all our team members are minors, so we gotta make sure everything is safe and sound.
what’s volunteering in Alterna like?
volunteering in Alterna is a lot about teamwork. we talk to each other through our own chats, coordinate on cool projects, assign a deadline to it, and meet it.
everything we do is online and asynchronous, which means you can collaborate on your own time, anywhere, and organize yourself as you see fit.
at the end of every quarter, you will receive a report of all the community service hours you’ve done, so you turn it in to whoever needs to look at it.
how long does volunteering last?
you can volunteer for as long as you want. that means you can also leave when you want.
usually volunteers stay with us for an average of 1 year, which also makes them qualify for a Presidential Service Award!*
*The Presidential Service Award can only be issued to those who live in the U.S.A., and is by annual nomination. We choose our best members and you can be one of them!
how much does it cost? (spoilers: $0)
$0. nothing. nada.
we occasionally give you the chance to buy shirts, contact cards, and extra stuff like that, but you’ll never be obligated to pay anything to volunteer with us.
i want to volunteer from time to time
that’s okay! sometimes we need people that have a very specific skill, but they are not permanent members of Alterna.
that’s why we have Opportunistic members who get called when we need their unique skills, and they get their full community service hours for it too!
i don’t know what to volunteer on ðŸ˜
unlike regular volunteering, we give you the chance to focus on a field you’d like to grow on.
for those who are unsure what they could be good at, we made a lil Find your Place form that you can fill out and get an idea of what would be the best fit for you!
what are you waiting for?!?!
this is your sign to join today and start making a change.
got questions?
we got answers. send us an email and we’ll be happy to help 🙂