Leading for Service: Principals’ Roles in Cultivating a Volunteerism Culture and Developing Students’ Leadership Skills in Jahra Public Schools

This study examines how school principals promote a culture of volunteer work in Jahra Governorate’s public schools and how this relates to students’ leadership skill development. Using a descriptive correlational survey supported with objective indicators analysis, questionnaires were administered to 416 teachers and 46 principals. Findings show principals’ roles in fostering volunteerism are moderate overall—high only in the environmental domain—while students’ leadership skills are generally high. Strong positive correlations emerged between all volunteerism culture dimensions and all leadership skill dimensions, indicating that schools with more robust service cultures tend to report stronger student leadership. Implications include: embedding service‑learning across subjects; establishing principal‑led community partnerships and schoolwide volunteer councils; creating recognition systems and micro‑credentials for student service leadership; providing PD for principals and teachers on designing, supervising, and assessing service projects; and integrating monitoring dashboards to track participation, impact, and equity of access.