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CVUs

Certified Volunteer Units

Download Your CVU Booklet here. Forms are due to the CVU chair by July 1st each year.

Certified Volunteer Units (CVUs)
The Certified Volunteer Units Program is intended to recognize an individual’s volunteer efforts in a TEEA club or association and their community. This award was established in Texas in 1983. It is also intended to help one grow personally in volunteer leadership skills and to show the volunteer how to use those skills in any one or more of several ways. For example:
• A club member may want to climb a “volunteer career ladder.” That is, they may want to go on to more responsible volunteer positions within the TEEA organization or in other volunteer groups.  This reason is a good one -volunteer leaders are made, not born, and they are needed more now in our democracy than ever before.
• A club member may want to look for paid employment now or in the future. Volunteer experience is becoming more and more accepted on an equal basis with paid employment, if described in comparable terms (job titles and descriptions of duties and responsibilities similar to paid employment) and properly documented (evidence is kept of the type and quality of work done).
• A club member may want to get academic credit for what has been learned as a TEEA community volunteer and as a homemaker. More and more institutions of higher education are giving academic credit for life experience, which of course, includes volunteer experience. For more information about this topic, visit the website for the Council for Adults and Experiential Learning (CAEL) at: www.cael.org. Their national headquarters office is located at: 55 East Monroe Street, Suite 1930, Chicago, Illinois, 60603. The phone number is: 312-499-2600. CAEL personnel may be able to tell you which colleges and universities near you offer credit for experiential learning.

What is a Certified Volunteer Unit (CVU)? 

A CVU is similar to the CEU (Continuing Education Unit) used to recognize individuals for completing adult and continuing education programs. The CVU is equivalent to 10 hours of volunteer effort. This includes hours spent in preparing to carry out a volunteer activity and hours spent directly in volunteer work within TEEA and the community. Therefore, you can count travel and telephone time that is part of your total volunteer effort.
How can I earn CVUs?  

By regularly recording volunteer service hours. When you have accumulated at least 500 hours of total service and have had that time validated by the State CVU Chair, you will receive a certificate of recognition from TEEA for the exact number of hours
submitted for the current year.
•For the first time, a member can go back 10 years and record their volunteer hours in order to obtain the first 500 hours.
•Use a different page for each organization and skip a couple of pages between organizations. If you volunteer often for an organization, you may want to use a different book for each organization.
•When you have accumulated 500 hours or more of volunteer time, enter the total hours for each organization on the summary sheet in the back of the log book and total all hours. Then enter your name, TEEA organization, full mailing address, telephone number, and county on the back of the summary sheet.