UWATX will focus on the St. John’s neighborhood during this year’s 24-hour session of community-wide giving through Amplify Austin in hopes we can expand our work in this community, as well as our other target neighborhoods including Manor and Dove Springs. Take a look at some of the projects volunteers completed in the St. John’s community within the last year! Webb students who participate in our Volunteer Project Leaders class have been busy improving their own neighborhood. For Valentine’s Day, they created cards and banners to show their appreciation for teachers at their school. VPL students also participated in our annual MLK Day of Service by working with members of the Young Leaders Society to create giant jenga and other games for the Big Game – Super Bowl XLIX watch party. Funds generated from the watch party will go toward the YLS $180K Challenge, raising money for full-time coordinators at Webb, Decker and Mendez Middle Schools. Last December, the neighborhood came together for our Community Tree Lighting held at Webb Middle School. UWATX volunteers gathered more than 1,600 books to give out to kids of all ages who attended the event. Many of the kids walked away with more books than they could carry. Our valued business partners have also been busy making St. John’s greater in the last year. Texas Mutual spent the day at Webb Middle School volunteering as part of the Insurance Challenge. Some volunteers worked to beautify the grounds, while others decorated and put together welcome boxes to inspire students for […]
Read MoreFavor Delivery Is “Amplifying St. John’s!”
Posted on by Ricky Deakyne
Local delivery service, Favor, has partnered with United Way for Greater Austin to help us “Amplify St. John’s!” Favor will donate $1 per every order received on March 5 to UWATX for Amplify Austin Day. You do not have to enter a special code or order from a specific restaurant to make your order count for us–ALL orders received on this day will benefit UWATX! Amplify Austin Day is an initiative run by I Live Here I Give Here to inspire Austinites to give back online for 24 hours. It takes place this year from March 5 at 6 p.m. to March 6 at 6 p.m. How does it work? It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3: Download the Favor app on your mobile phone, or visit FavorDelivery.com to download. Order food from any restaurant or store anytime from 8 a.m. on March 5th until the service stops running at 3 a.m. on March 6th. You can see if you are within Favor’s delivery area here. You just made Austin greater by investing in the St. John’s community–now enjoy your delicious meal or goods! This offer applies to more than food–you can think of Favor as your personal assistant! They deliver meals, prescriptions, groceries, dry cleaning, or anything else you may need. If you have additional questions about Favor, check out their Frequently Asked Questions page. Want to support UWATX further during Amplify Austin? Learn more about our Amplify St. John’s campaign or schedule your donation in advance now.
Read MoreWebb Students Lead Their Own Volunteer Project
Posted on by Ricky Deakyne
It’s 4 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon, and the halls of Webb Middle School are growing quiet. However, three students aren’t part of the stampede of their peers racing for the exits. They’re in a classroom on the second floor, making phone calls to local business owners to enlist help in putting on a St. Patrick’s Day pancake breakfast for families staying at the Ronald McDonald House. These are the students of United Way for Greater Austin’s Volunteer Project Leaders program, and this isn’t their first rodeo. The kids in the VPL program at Webb have been conducting volunteer projects to help out around their community since the program’s inception four years ago. They’ve organized and led campus cleanups, campaigns to gather thank you notes for school librarians, community needs assessments, and a host of other initiatives designed to encourage their classmates and neighbors to give back to their community in St. John’s. While the idea of middle school students dedicating so much of their free time to philanthropic projects may seem extraordinary to many, it’s a no-brainer to the VPL kids. “What would you do if you just saw someone throwing trash around your neighborhood?” says LaDascious, an 8th grader who’s been a part of the program since he arrived at Webb Middle School. He’s just left a voicemail for a manager at Kerbey Lane Cafe, a frequent UWATX collaborator, asking for pancake mix donations and any helping hands they could provide. Kids in the program get many opportunities to practice this sort of outreach, […]
Read MoreFebruary’s Face 2 Face Recap
Posted on by Ricky Deakyne
The Austin Business Journal’s Face 2 Face speaker series creates a space for the exchange of ideas among Austin’s business community in a setting echoing TED Talks. It kicks off with a half-hour of breakfast and networking at 8:30 a.m., followed by a one-hour Q&A session with a featured guest and ABJ editor, Colin Pope. We are honored and delighted to be the 2015 Community Partner of the monthly series, which gives us the opportunity to share our work among the community’s business elite by highlighting various programs and partners each month. February’s speaker was Co-CEO of Whole Foods, Walter Robb, who emphasized culture, quality and marketing as strategic points in the development of the Whole Foods brand. He also discussed the delicate balance of driving rapid growth while still maintaining ties to the community at local and global levels. “Culture belongs on the balance sheet of the company.” – Walter Robb, Co-CEO of Whole Foods Robb shared his insights about building culture among employees and customers in order to ground the work and growth of Whole Foods in shared values that are broadly inclusive and clearly communicated. “Culture belongs on the balance sheet of the company,” Robb said. We agree–recent statistics show that more than half of millennials (the fastest growing group of employees) said a company’s involvement in philanthropic causes influenced whether or not they accepted a job in the past. We have seen firsthand the positive impact a philanthropic component can have on a company; just ask any of our generous business partners! The idea of […]
Read More2-1-1 Call Data Shows Community Needs and Trends for Greater Austin
Posted on by Ricky Deakyne
Happy February 11th, or as we like to say at United Way for Greater Austin, “Happy 2-1-1 Day!” Each year, 2-1-1 resource centers around the country celebrate this day and aim to raise awareness about the importance of the service. Since 1996, our Navigation Center has served the Greater Austin community as an access point for health and human services referrals. We are able to quickly and privately connect those in need of assistance to nonprofit and government resources, as well as track the needs and trends of the community as a whole with each call. The UWATX Navigation Center celebrates 2-1-1 Day by releasing an annual “Community Needs and Trends Report,” a compilation of data reflecting the scope of needs within our community throughout the year. View the complete report for 2014 here. The most recent data showcases the suburbanization of poverty in our region. While 2-1-1 call volume stabilized in Central and East Austin, we saw a significant increase in call volume from outlying areas, including Pflugerville, Manor, San Marcos and portions of Bastrop County. We aren’t the only ones noticing this trend. According to the Brookings Institute, “There has been a 143% increase in suburban poverty in the Austin metro area over the last decade.” Of the 327,935 calls answered in 2014, 79% of callers were female. We know that single parent-headed households are more likely to live in poverty than dual income households. The majority of callers were between 20 to 50-years-old, indicating that it is the working […]
Read MoreVolunteers Spread Love to Local Teachers for Valentine’s Day
Posted on by Ricky Deakyne
According to the Greeting Card Association, 190 million Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged each year. Due in part to United Way for Greater Austin’s first family-friendly Valentine’s Day volunteer event, community members will contribute nearly 1,000 cards to spread love to those giving back in the greater Austin community. On Saturday, February 7th, 25 volunteers created handmade Valentine’s Day cards to acknowledge the teachers and support staff who work every day in our target neighborhoods: Dove Springs, St. John’s and Manor. Volunteers wrote inspiring notes for preschool and middle school teachers, and thanked the businesses who run UWATX employee campaigns. Without the dedicated teachers, principals and staff who support Success By 6 and Target Graduation, programs aimed at improving school readiness and graduation rates, our work would not be possible. [youtube id=pNu16XsTm4Q] UWATX is investing in the future of greater Austin. In addition to the community volunteer event, our middle school Volunteer Project Leaders also created cards. These Volunteer Project Leaders are part of an afterschool program at Mendez, Webb and Decker Middle Schools that train middle school students to identify community needs and coordinate volunteer projects. More than 35 middle school students contributed to the massive Valentine’s Day card project by writing notes to their teachers and making appreciation banners to hang in the schools. Valentine’s Day is a day to recognize and appreciate all of the people in your life. We hope this volunteer project inspires you to tell those around you that you love them–whether it is […]
Read MoreAmplify St. John’s 2015
Posted on by Ricky Deakyne
2015 marks the third year of Amplify Austin Day–a 24-hour virtual giving movement led by I Live Here, I Give Here. This year, United Way for Greater Austin is utilizing this day of awareness–and the weeks leading up to it–to highlight a community we care deeply about: St. John’s neighborhood in northeast Austin. We need your help to #AmplifyStJohns from March 5th at 6 p.m. to March 6th at 6 p.m. St. John’s is host to Webb Middle School in which a whopping 97% of students are economically disadvantaged. We invest $309,000 annually in Webb in order to better the lives of these students and their families through mentoring, tutoring, summer programs and case management, along with other services through our Target Graduation program. Last year, we provided these services to 76% of the students at Webb. Webb Middle School students are only a small portion of the economically disadvantaged youth in St. John’s. In fact, 60% of all children in the St. John’s neighborhood live in poverty. This percentage has an even greater impact when compared to the number of Austinites in general living in poverty: 38%. St. John’s residents of every age group are more likely to be living in poverty or to be low-income than overall City of Austin residents. The St. John’s community lacks many of the tools they need in order to help themselves. More than half of the residents in this neighborhood are Hispanic, and 48% of residences are headed up by a single parent. Many residents […]
Read MoreTapestry Foundation grant will expand Play To Learn
Posted on by Ricky Deakyne
In 2011, United Way for Greater Austin launched the Play To Learn program, made possible through a Tapestry Foundation grant. As a result of the grant, thirty parents received UWATX’s unique eight-week course providing free education for underserved parents and their 2- and 3-year-old children. Since then, more than 400 families have benefitted from the Play To Learn program. We are pleased to announce that in 2015, the Tapestry Foundation will help this program expand even further with an additional $75,000 grant given to UWATX. The Tapestry Foundation is a private family foundation that awards grants to Austin organizations providing programs around early childhood and parenting education, as well as literacy-based and social-emotional learning programs. Thanks to initial grants from the Tapestry Foundation, UWATX was able to gain additional funders in support of the project, including Samsung, Famigo, Applied Materials, Daniels Fund and some very generous private donors, as well as additional partners. From 2000 to 2010, Austin experienced a 71% increase in the number of low-income children under the age of 6. Children living in poverty face risks other children may not, and are less likely to enter school socially, emotionally and cognitively ready. The Play To Learn program works by intervening before a child enters kindergarten, rather than children entering school unprepared and having to be caught up, wasting school districts’ time and money in additional resources. Additionally, the child now has a better chance of graduating high school and college, and securing a job with a livable wage. […]
Read MoreUT Austin Students Win $100,000 to Build and Launch 2-1-1 App
Posted on by Ricky Deakyne
Need help finding access to temporary housing, food banks or health services? You can always call 2-1-1 at anytime–but soon there will also be an app for that. A team of University of Texas at Austin students spent last fall developing a smartphone app called “CallScout,” designed to help Austin residents have easier access to social services information. VP of UWATX’s 2-1-1 Navigation Center, Kay Garza, said this app is an important step to bringing information to more low-income individuals because they are more likely to have phone internet access than home internet access. The project took these 12 students to New York in January, where they competed against student teams from other schools, such as Stanford and UC Berkeley, for the grand $100,000 Watson University Competition prize—and won! The app uses Watson technology developed by IBM. Watson is a supercomputer that can quickly sift through large amounts of information to answer complex questions, keeping “in mind” natural speech nuances. CallScout allows users to ask Watson a complete question, i.e. “Where can I find food for my family?” The app will then list nearest food pantries based on the user’s location, along with contact information, hours of service and user reviews. It also allows users to create their own review of the service received, so others using the app may see useful information when choosing a service to best fit their needs. The UT Austin students created a video showing exactly how the CallScout app will function. The Navigation Center […]
Read MoreDr. Leah Newkirk Meunier on “Leaning In”
Posted on by Ricky Deakyne
We are pleased to feature our very own Leah Newkirk Meunier, Ph.D. in an upcoming Lean In Panel, a sold-out UWATX signature event sponsored by St. David’s HealthCare. The panel is based on the concepts laid out by Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, in her groundbreaking book, Lean In, which discusses how embracing a career and a healthy family life are applicable to both women and men. In the book, Sandberg argues that 21st Century challenges are going to be best tackled by people who can stay at the top of their games professionally while not sacrificing their ability to be great parents and spouses. This panel will offer valuable thoughts on how to “lean in”—thoughts that are important for people of all ages and at all stages of life. When asked about her take on Lean In, Leah offered insight about those who have inspired her to achieve great success in her personal and professional life. “When I think about the women who paved the way for me to achieve all that I have, my husband’s 95-year-old great aunt, Honey, comes to mind. She was leaning in before it even had a name. As a Chinese-American immigrant and a woman who was not permitted to attend college or learn to drive a car, she had very little opportunity presented to her, but singlehandedly ran not one, but two businesses!” Dr. Meunier is the head of our Women’s Leadership Council and director of the Early Childhood Business Alliance and […]
Read More