Diversity to me means....

Thanks Sam Fontaine from United Way of Asheville and Buncombe County for telling us what Diversity means to you!

Diversity is the willingness to approach others with empathy and respect, regardless of who they are or what they look like. Diversity accepts the fact that every individual is different in a plethora of ways. We have different skin color, religious beliefs, socioeconomic class, hair color, political affiliation, and personality to name just a few of the many distinctions we have as human beings. These really just graze the surface. We should celebrate our differences by understanding that these differences are omnipresent and neutral. There should be no negative connotation in our thoughts, expel the stereotypes that categorize us based on our differences. Instead, think about the things that make us common and the same. We all have feelings, we all face struggles. Diversity is accepting these similarities and not allowing our negative conditioning to supersede the positive. We merely need to treat others fairly; the golden rule truly applies here.

How do I celebrate it?

I “celebrate” diversity by engaging honestly with other human beings. Having conversations based on mutual respect and empathy. We need to change our mindset to: “I may be different from you but I understand your struggles, I feel your pain.”  The best way to celebrate diversity is by practicing it, constantly, with everyone you meet.

In my VISTA year I have worked with people from many walks of life, all with different needs and interests. Meeting those needs has been a challenge. A challenge that I have overcome by approaching them with respect. Particularly, I work with a lot of people who have different religious beliefs than me. By putting those differences aside, I have been able to find common ground with them and we have built mutually beneficial relationships from there.

Sam is the Community Engagement Coordinator for Community School Initiative at Enka Middle School. 

Keep your stories coming!

Make your Mark on Hunger!

Did you know that 16 million kids in America aren't getting the food they need?

This spring, from March 15--April 30, generationOn is challenging kids and teens to Make Their Mark on Hunger through meaningful hands-on service in their communities. For each youth engaged in service ConAgra will donate a meal to Feeding America, up to 10,000 meals. The campaign is brought to you by generationOn with the generous support of presenting sponsor ConAgra Foods Foundation with additional support from the National Turkey Federation and C&S Wholesale Grocers.

By signing up you will receive access to project guides, media tools, reflection activities and lesson plans, all designed to support you in learning about, and taking action to address the issue of child hunger in the US. Sign up here!

By signing up, you will receive access to project guides, media tools, reflection activities, and lesson plans, all designed to support youth in learning about, and taking action to address, the issue of child hunger in the US.

NOMINATE A YOUNG HERO FOR A $5,000 BARRON PRIZE!

 The Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes invites nominations for its 2015 awards. The Barron Prize celebrates inspiring, public-spirited young people ages 8 to 18 who have made a significant positive difference to people and our environment. Each year, fifteen winners each receive a $5,000 cash award to support their service work or higher education. 

Annual nomination deadline is April 15. For more information and to access our online application, visit www.barronprize.org

Thanks Alexandra, for your awesome February Blog!

Topic: What does diversity mean to you and how are you celebrating it this month?

Enka Middle School is a diverse community, but at first glance, it may not appear that way.  Diversity goes beyond just the notable physical appearances and differences and language variations. Enka’s 1000 students come from diverse backgrounds that are almost invisible at first glance. A lot of Middle School students are not open about their lives outside of school and so they go unnoticed. The focus is often on things the students have in common: Common Core standards, Math, Language Arts, and EOG scores. But in order for Middle Schoolers to be successful in academics, their diverse backgrounds need to be taken into account.

A natural example of diversity in the Enka-Candler community is the Hispanic and Russian neighborhoods. We offer a variety of parent and family programs in the evening at Enka Middle School. So far we’ve held two computer literacy nights, three healthy living nights, and a family game night. Diversity comes up the most when we’re talking about literacy. If our literacy nights focus solely on the English language, we are missing a crucial part of the community. This is one of those examples where it is crucial to take diversity into account. But like I mentioned earlier, language variations are a more noticeable form of diversity.

My main work is planning and implementing after-school enrichment for students. Because we’re trying to reach a variety of students, diversity is something we need to take into account. What do students who come from different communities need? What do they want? I think after-school clubs are a good way to acknowledge the diversity of students because there are not federal or national standards they need to adhere too. During the after-school hours, students have more freedom to explore their diverse interests.

In terms of celebrating diversity, I think it’s important for students to understand and respect the differences between themselves and their classmates. Celebrating diversity should be a part of everyday life. It’s great to talk about diversity at a national and global level but it is also important to talk about local diversity and the differences students experience in their community and their neighborhoods.

Alexandra is a VISTA serving at United Way of Asheville and Buncombe County. She is the Student Success Coordinator for the Community school Initiative at Enka Middle school. 

Keep up the great work!

MLK Day of Service for Alyssa and Amanda at 826 Valencia!

Alyssa, Volunteer Engagement Assistant: We celebrated our Day of Service on Tuesday, January 20th  by supporting two very unique 826 Valencia programs — the Storytelling and Bookmaking Field Trip Program and After-School Tutoring at Buena Vista Horace Mann Elementary School (BVHM).

Four days a week, 826 Valencia welcomes a class of up to thirty-five students for a morning of high-energy learning. Class visits are prioritized for classes in San Francisco public schools, specifically schools with an Academic Performance Index (API)  score of less than 800 as well as an above average of a free reduced lunch rate.

During our Day of Service, a group of twenty-two eager-to-write second graders from Marshall Elementary School (with an API score of 783 and a free reduced lunch rate of 80.9%)  came to 826 Valencia for a Storytelling and Bookmaking Field Trip. The students were charged with the task of writing an original story as a group with the help of 826 volunteers. We helped students participate in a round-table discussion to generate their own characters, setting, and plot points. In this field trip, students crafted a story about an animated hash brown who dreamed of becoming a race car driver. His worst fear? Teeth! The students collectively leave the story at a cliffhanger and, with one-on one help from volunteers, write their own individual endings. As the students furiously write their endings, a professional artist volunteer illustrates the story.

When the students complete their endings, all student writing is sent to our fictional in-house grouchy editor, Mr. Blue (a volunteer who patiently hides in our attic and periodically shouts down at the students, demanding original writing). Mr. Blue calls upon each student and reads their ending aloud, praising them for their hard work and original writing. Mr. Blue approves all student work by marking it with an official 826 stamp and sends the writing down to be “published” and bound by volunteers.

Students leave 826 with a copy of their very own self-published book filled with illustrations, and complete with an “About the Author page”. This field trip teaches students about collaboration, self-editing, the bookmaking process, and elements of successful storytelling. It also teaches volunteers to encourage uniqueness and individuality by giving praise to a quality of work that stands out from the rest.

Amanda, Development Assistant: In the afternoon, we supported the after-school program at Buena Vista Horace Mann (BVHM), a Spanish bilingual K-8 school in San Francisco’s Mission District. At BVHM, we work with twenty 3^rd graders, twenty 4^th graders, and twenty 5^th graders who are selected to participate in the program based on their school performance (below grade-level proficiency and English as a second language). Every day, these students spend one hour with us deepening their skills and comfort around reading and writing, and one hour with tutors from the school working on their homework.

On our Day of Service, the 5th graders were working on developing their persuasive writing skills. At 826, we firmly believe that writing is best taught within a meaningful context, so the students were tasked with convincing us that they deserved a truly meaningful honor. The prize? One that any San Franciscan would jump at: the chance to interview hometown heroes, the San Francisco Giants, at their annual Press Day, an event attended by dozens of professional journalists and sports writers. The three students who wrote the most compelling arguments for why they should chosen to interview a Giants player would be selected to for the opportunity. As you might imagine, this generated lots of excitement and fierce competition for one of the top spots.

To help students get warmed up for the assignment, we talked about ways they use persuasion in their everyday lives. For example, if they wanted to go to the movies with their friends, but their mom wanted them to help with chores, how would they convince her to let them go out instead? We came to the conclusion that if they offered compelling evidence for why they ought to be allowed to go to the movies (“The movie might be educational, and I might learn something!”) rather than just saying because, their moms would be more likely to let them off the hook for chores.

Next, using an idea web to help organize our thoughts, we worked with the students to help them brainstorm reasons they should be selected to interview the Giants. Their arguments ranged from pretty persuasive to pretty out there, and many students showed amazing insight about their own strengths and skills. A highlight: one student wrote that she would make a good interviewer because she wasn’t shy and wouldn’t be afraid to ask the players questions. Our goal for the day was simply to help students come up with ideas to include in their letters. Over following days, students worked on organizing those ideas, crafting their arguments, and honing them to perfection.

Reflection: Dipping into programs every once in a while is especially important for us as administrative staff working in volunteer engagement and fundraising because it keeps us in touch with the work at the heart of our organization. Spending time helping in programs helps us to understand how programs are structured, what program goals are, and how students think and feel and respond to the curriculum we offer. This first-hand experience better equips us to explain the strengths of our various programs to prospective funders and provides us with valuable anecdotal evidence to add flavor to proposals. It also provides us with the opportunity to view things from the volunteer perspective, which can help us to evaluate the effectiveness of our volunteer training and support efforts and to match volunteers with programs that fit their skills and interests.

                       
Do you know a young person between the ages of 5 and 18 who has done remarkable community service in the past 12 months?

The Hasbro Community Action Hero Award recognizes outstanding youth volunteers who show that you are never to young to make a difference in your local and global community. Hasbro Children's Fund and generationOn will celebrate 10 young people between the ages of 5 and 18 for their extraordinary community service and volunteer activities at a special recognition event in Los Angee, award each winner $1,000 education scholarship and a $500 grant to their selected non-profit.

A Hasbro Community Action Hero is a young person who makes an extraordinary mark on the world through service. The nominee's achievements must demonstrate one or more of the following characteristics:

Outstanding service to one's local, national, or global community

Extraordinary effort in creating innovative solutions to community needs

Leadership of an exceptional service or advocacy activity.

Read about eligibility for Hasbro Community Action Heroes and nominate a young person here!

The generationOn team MLK Day of Service project at PS/MS 57

January 15, 2015 would have been Martin Luther King's 86th birthday. To help celebrate the civil rights activist's birthday and Martin Luther King, Jr. National Day of Service, the generationOn team, together with Target, hosted a day of service for the students of PS/MS 57 James Weldon Johnson Leadership Academy in NYC.

Over 100 Target volunteers helped 6th, 7th and 8th graders rotate through service projects ranging from making homemade tambourines for a special needs preschool music program; to packing healthy soup kits for food insecure families; to making peace bracelets spreading Dr. King's message of tolerance. There was even a station where kids could pose for an Instagram to honor Dr. King's birthday and think about how he would have used the platform to help spread his message of hope. 

After rotating through the various service stations, the students of MS 57 were tasked with writing and decorating messages of hope as a reflection activity. Here you can see one of the squares with the quote "We must learn to live together as brothers of perish as fools." ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. These squares were ultimately stiched together, making a quilt that will hang in the school. 

During the event, students were asked what MLK Day of Service means to them and why it's important to honor his legacy with service. Here are a few of the responses:

"It's important because we're showing our love for him and thanking him for standing up for us." - Ashley

"He did something no one else did and represented democracy." - Janna

"It's important because we should team up together and not argue about things." - James