Education Award Guidebook | The Segal AmeriCorps Education Award

Education Award Guidebook | The Segal AmeriCorps Education Award

Make a Difference Day in Winston-Salem

For Make a Difference Day, we chose to take advantage of a large amount of children's books that the YMCA Literacy Inititative was given by another non-profit to donate to individuals as gifts. We worked with mothers in an ESL class through the Toyota Family Literacy Program. Our volunteers helped to organize the books, selecting books ideal for elementary school children. Once the books were selected, we helped the volunteers write Get Well letters in English (vocabulary, phrases) to sick children. They enjoyed using their creativity, decorating the letter with drawings and stickers. Together with the volunteers, we wrote over 30 letters, all of which were matched with a children's book and given to a reduced price/free clinic. These books and Get Well letters will be given as gifts to sick children visiting the clinic.
After writing the letters, we discussed the importance of reading to children, associating books with gifts, and the need for literacy in Winston-Salem. We taught about the ways in which children learn to read, how children's books teach morals/lessons, etc. At the end of the class period, the mothers were able to select books for their children and write them a note.
Grant led the group by helping with organizing and transporting the books, providing materials for the letters and help with writing the letters in English. Nora led the follow-up discussion on literacy and the importance of reading to children at an early age. However, we collaborated our time and efforts to do this project and gave the books to the clinic together.
The group of volunteers consisted of 8 mothers in the literacy program. We worked through the Toyota Family Literacy Program, Easton Elementary School, and used books donated by Johnathan's Legacy. The books were donated to the Community Care Clinic.

Grant & Nora

Making a Difference One Flier At A Time

Brainstorming is fun

About to begin the project :)

Finished product

Another job well done!

During the past few months it has been so amazing getting to know the students that I am working with. One of the programs that I work with through LiteracyCorp is called Learning Together through Guilford Child Development. Learning Together is a family literacy program that offers free GED and ESL instruction to adult participants and an academically rich curriculum for their children.

One of the goals that I have while working with this program is to create a group of motivated, well-trained, intelligent, on call tutors that work with the GED and ESL students enrolled with the Learning Together program. After doing a needs assessment within the program, learning the ins and outs of the protocol and HR process, I am ready for recruitment.

The Make a Difference Project that I decided to do was to have to students to brainstorm ideas for fliers that would recruit tutors for the program. As a class, we discussed why they would like to have tutors and what they would want in a tutor. We also talked how they could create flier and what they could draw on their flier to make it more attractive.

These fliers will be put up in visible places within the community in hopes to gain more volunteer interest for our program. This project will not only make a difference for our program in the amount of volunteers that we will have but also made a difference for our participants. They each had a chance to think about how they would recruit volunteers and learned how to make fliers. Also, we all had fun in the process!

"Spray paint, everybody. No rules!"

I'm sure that anyone who has read Pilar's post knows that I was volunteering with the Read-Seed event. I was there to support whatever needed to be done, which led me to flex both real and creative muscle (what little there is in both departments).

When I arrived, Jenni Davidson and her two Sophomore-Experience volunteers had just started setting up, so I helped them carry out tents and tables. Once that was done, we started assembling our Pagoda of Philanthropy. I didn't tell anyone that was the name I had given our tent-and-tables set up...mostly because I knew I was the only one who thought it was cool.

As we were finishing up with the tent (or pagoda, whichever floats your boat), Pilar arrived with an arm-load of supplies from Adelaide's car. She asked me to help her unload the car, but when I turned around, Adelaide was driving her car up the sidewalk. Suffice it to say, that made unloading a bit easier, though we were all keeping our eyes out for campus police.

Adelaide's effervescent personality helped all of us hit the ground running. As Pilar already posted, we were drawing cartoon figures and creating yellow, cardboard bricks. Once I finished helping getting everything set up, I started working on my rendition of Thing 1 from The Cat in the Hat. I spent the majority of the time working on this ersatz-Thing 1, and even had to get some last minute help from Pilar to get the hair colored in time.

Pilar, on the other hand, was all over the place. Everytime I looked up, she was doing something different, from taking pictures, to signing in volunteers, to offering encouragement to the those of us who qualified as less artistic, and even working on Adelaide's Yellow Brick Road, which she had to cover herself in a transparent, yellow poncho to start painting. I think Adelaide has a thing for the color yellow.

Evidently, things are much wilder in the Smith Warehouse where Pilar works, along with Neil Hoefs, the Vista* that organized this event, as well as the event taking place at the Duke Community Gardens. I learned this when Pilar, who was getting ready to begin painting the bricks, picked up two cans of spray paint and shouts out, "Spray paint, everybody. No rules," and then begins to laugh to herself. Evidently, the "No rules!" thing is something Neil often does. The "Wildness" theory was corroborated when Neil came over to our site after the events wrapped up; he and Pilar greeted each other with a secret handshake. It was awesome. No really, you should have seen it; it was perfectly timed and everything.

The event went very well, we even recruited some volunteers right off the sidewalk. On top of that, several of the volunteers committed themselves to volunteering at Reed-Seed's Read-A-Thon in early November. In addition, we were able to create several new cartoon figures for Adelaide and her event. It was a really fun experience, and now I find myself saying "No rules" as well.

Make a Difference Day at Duke University

Make a Difference Day with the Duke Office of Student Community Volunteer Programs here at Duke University was a two site setup coordinated mainly by our fearless VISTA* Neil Hoefs. Neil coordinated with local partners Read Seed and Duke Community Garden for a morning of service in Durham.

At the Duke Community Garden, volunteers gleaned leftover produce for eventual distribution at the Durham Food Bank.

My role in the event was to manage the Read Seed Site on Duke's West Campus. We had a great location in the very heart of the campus quad thanks to the help of fellow sponsor Jenni Davidson with the Sophomore Year Experience. Ian Wolf, fellow Literacy Corps member at Duke, also helped out at the site. We worked with Adelaide from Read Seed to prepare for their annual Read-A-Thon in November. Volunteers helped out by drawing storybook characters and creating "yellow bricks" that will decorate the Read-A-Thon..

Ian working on his character: Thing #1

We had around 10-12 volunteers throughout the morning at our site, and a similar amount at the Garden. It was encouraging to see how passers-by wanted to get involved and were interested to learn more about Make a Difference Day in general. We answered a lot of questions and brought attention to the work Adelaide and Read Seed do here in Durham to bring more books to children. Also, Adelaide was very pleased with our work and seemed sincerely thankful for our service.

Working in pairs, we were able to make 3 or 4 characters for the Read-a-Thon and I believe we signed some people up to volunteer on that date. After that we had pizza and soda at the quad. Overall, it was a good day that encouraged our partners and volunteers.

Make a Difference Day Plans

Hi all,
  Please take a moment to post about your Make a Difference Day plans. What interesting service projects have you come up with? What are some of the challenges you've faced during the planning process? What tips/tricks have you figured out that you could recommend to others?

More on Service-Learning

Hey everyone!

So I spent quite a bit of time thinking and wrestling with how best to incorporate service-learning here at my site. As I mentioned in our seminar, I plan to combine the ABE reading class I'll be teaching with this service-learning project. (Side note, I'm so excited to be getting to teach a small group class, the particular group I'll be working with are five women, four of which are mothers--and they all are higher level readers, close to a 6th or 7th grade reading level, which means they are tantalizingly close to qualifying for the GED.) Anyhow, we're going to reading and working with a lot of cool material that centers around women and race, now and in the 1960s.

I am a bit stuck, when it comes to what we can do as a meaningful service project that would integrate the content used, the literacy that the students are in the process of gaining, and benefit our community...I wonder if any of you all have any ideas. I had been thinking about the class creating materials for future classes (or to be supplemental material for our tutors), but I'm not sure. I'd more than welcome any ideas from you all! Also, I would love to hear more about what you all are planning on doing.

Jenn

September in Durham, NC

(You can click on any of these pictures to get a full-sized image)
During September, the Duke Center for Civic Engagement interviewed almost 130 new Duke students for our America Reads/America Counts program. We had a steady stream of work study and volunteer college kids coming through our office on any given day. My desk, which is out in the open on the floor was constantly surrounded with new tutors signing up for times. It was a fast month.

Because our program is well-known on campus and because we are federally funded, I didn't have to recruit heavily. However, I still put out an e-flier on campus and made an appearance at a volunteer fair that was hosted by my office. That fair, put together by my supervisor and the AmeriCorps*VISTA in our office went really smoothly, drawing hundreds of Duke students and Durham community partners together.

We also hosted several trainings, some for returning tutors, some for our Head Tutors who are small group leaders within the program. Our Head Tutor Training was particularly enjoyable because we began the training at the Scrap Exchange on Foster Street in Durham.

The Scrap Exchange was a great host and the creative exercises helped the Head Tutors to get to know each other better. They also had some tangible manifestations of the work they did together, including one tutor who they dressed as a robot and who remained dressed up for almost the entire training session!

This month, AmeriCorps members participated in the September 11th Day of Service. For our service, we went to the Food Bank of Durham. In the morning shift, our main role was to throw out a ton of moldy bread donations which could not be given away in time before they went bad. This was quite a task and it took about 14 of us to throw away all that waste.

Patrick is the manager at the Food Bank. He gave us our tasks and was very helpful and enthusiastic.

AmeriCorps 9/11 day of service at Durham Food Bank from Pilar Timpane on Vimeo.

NC LiteracyCorps in the news

Our project at the Durham Food Bank on Friday, September 10th was covered by the Durham Herald-Sun. Go to http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story/9486355/article-Remembering-9-11?instance=wentz_vicki to read all about it.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service

Monday, January 18th, our group joined R.O.C.T.S. of UNC Chapel Hill in a service project at Christ United Methodist Church in Southern Village. We spent the morning with scores of other volunteers, making no-sew blankets and scarves, stuffing Valentine's treat bags for deployed soldiers, and using scrap felt to make dog and cat toys to raise money for local charities. Here are pictures featuring just a few of our Americorps members volunteering.