Participate in a Twitter Chat about Youth Volunteering

We’d like to invite you to participate in a Twitter Chat next week about youth volunteering. The US Department of Health and Human Services, @PHEgov, will be hosting a Twitter chat on Tuesday, April 21: 1-2pm ET. We’d love for you to participate and share your Red Cross story. To participate, use your personal handle and #NHSSchat in all your tweets. More about the chat info here. Also, if you haven’t already, follow the American Red Cross on Twitter.

During the chat, they will be discussing:

• Why volunteering matters to students and how it helps you and your community
• When is the best time to make the choice to volunteer and how volunteering before a disaster strikes makes your community more healthy when disaster strikes .
• Where young people can learn more about volunteering
• And more!

 April 21, 1-2PM ET | Hosted by @PHEgov | Use #NHSSchat in all your tweets

Participating in a twitter chat is a simple way to learn more about a topic and share your ideas. It’s a great way to build your network and credibility online by showing your own expertise and passion around given topic. Twitter chats are simply a public conversation held on Twitter.

During the Student Health Volunteers Chat, we plan to discuss why choosing to become a student health volunteer matters to you and to your community, how you can volunteer, how volunteering can help with your career development, and more.

What is a Twitter Chat?

A Twitter chat is a way to have a conversation via Twitter that are scheduled for a certain date and time and that focus on a specific topic. They typically include a series of questions to help guide the discussion. Participants join the conversation by using tweets and including a predefined “hashtag” in each one.  A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by a hash or pound sign (#) and used to identify messages on a specific topic.  Hashtags cannot use spaces.

The Student Health Volunteers chat will use the hashtag #NHSSchat.  The Student Health Volunteers Twitter Chat will be the first in a series of chats hosted by the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response in support of the National Health Security Strategy.

How do I join the conversation?

Once you have signed in to Twitter, search for the hashtag #NHSSchat and select Add Column.  All of the tweets that are sent using that hashtag will show up in that column.  If you want to tweet, simply select “New Tweet”, type your tweet into the dialogue box, and select Tweet.

You can use Twitter to track the chat as well – just type the search term #NHSSchat into the search box.  However, tweets on Twitter may not be ranked in real-time order and this method has a more significant delay.

To join in the conversation, use the hashtag #NHSSchat in all of your tweets. This will allow all tweets in the conversation to be grouped. Leave comments, retweet other tweets, answer questions or even ask your own questions to further the conversation.