During President Obama’s Back to School speech at the beginning of the school year, he said, “There is a young man, Jake Bernstein…they’ve held volunteer fairs and put up an online database and helped thousands of families to find volunteer opportunities.”

Recently, Bernstein took the organization from the regional to the national scale.  The organization, previously know as St. Louis Volunteen, was appropriately given a new title: VolunTEEN Nation.

“VolunTEEN is an organization where teenagers can find out what volunteer opportunities there are in St. Louis,” Varun Chakravarthy, a member of VolunTEEN, said.

However, VolunTEEN has spread from St. Louis.

“Originally this was just in the St. Louis area,” VolunTEEN co-founder and senior Jake Bernstein said. “But now we’re nationwide, and currently we’re working on developing the database so that it can have a practical use in every region of the country.”

Some members of VolunTEEN have begun looking forward to the next step.

“If we can get it to the international level,” Chakravarthy said. “Which is very, very hard, it would be great. I don’t know if it’s going to happen, but I think that [we can do it] if we just are able to focus on our country, and able to get even more volunteer opportunities online.”

Bernstein will be graduating this year and so he has created a system for next year’s St. Louis VolunTEEN.

“Jake has picked out a few students to help out when he’s gone,” Sophia Rotman, sophomore, said. “It’s our job to carry out what he’s heading for. It’s going to be hard, but he’s helping us with this project, and hopefully other projects we can do on our own.”

“My goal is for kids in Clayton and other places to really understand the local piece of VolunTEEN,” Bernstein said.  “And that the projects be completely led by kids at Clayton and other schools in St. Louis next year. There are many kids at CHS who have really stepped up in terms of helping out.”

However, Bernstein still plans to lead one more project – the 3rd Annual St. Louis Youth Volunteer Fair. On April 15, from 1-3 pm, youth can go to the Magic House, St. Louis Children’s Museum to learn more about volunteer opportunities in St. Louis.

“It is a great opportunity for kids throughout St. Louis to learn about volunteer opportunities for the summer and beyond,” Bernstein said. “In the past, it has been very successful, and I’m really happy to say that this year, a lot of kids at Clayton have been involved in the planning process.”

Bernstein emphasized the importance of loving what you do.

“For me, working with kids on the autism spectrum, that was very important to me, and so that became a passion,” Bernstein said. “I hope that future VolunTEENers can find a similar passion and use the credibility we have developed behind the VolunTEEN Nation name to develop something incredible.”

“I think that every high school student has the potential to start their own initiative in volunteering,” Bernstein said. “And around the country there are so many kids who have started with something small, and if I looked two years ago, I never would have thought VolunTEEN would be what it was today. Going national was always a far off goal, but it’s incredible to have seen it really come to fruition.”