The UWATX Volunteer Project Leader (VPL) middle school program aims to transform youth into active community leaders by teaching them leadership skills they need to make lasting change in their communities. This week, 35 middle school VPL students from the three campuses we work on attended a celebration of their accomplishments at Kerbey Lane Cafe. They ordered pancakes and breakfast tacos from a special menu featuring a letter of encouragement and congratulations from Kerbey Lane’s CEO and UWATX Board Member, Mason Ayer. These students from Mendez, Webb and Decker Middle Schools completed 20 volunteer projects this year, ranging from making seed balls and beautifying their neighborhoods, to packing hygiene kits for the homeless and leading a craft station for refugee children. After breakfast, students received special certificates, t-shirts and journals to document their ideas on how to continue making Austin greater. As with any VPL meeting, the event concluded with a peer shoutout exercise we call “brag on your neighbor.” Students and volunteers recognized the contributions of each other that made this year both successful and fun. Below are some messages left by the students on a reflection board from the event: “Thank you for helping me help others” “Thank you for showing me skills I didn’t know I had” “Because of VPL, I know that I want to grow up to be a philanthropist” Want to make a difference in the community? Visit HandsOnCentralTexas.org, the largest volunteer network in Central Texas, and find opportunities that interest you!
Read MoreVolunteer Spotlight: Caroline Trang and Frances Jordan
Our middle school VPL program is full of outstanding volunteers! You may have read earlier this week about Cristian Dominguez from Webb Middle School — today we are highlighting another VPL volunteer, Caroline Trang, in honor of National Volunteer Week. Caroline is a 7th grader at Decker Middle School, one of the three middle schools served by our Middle School Matters program. This year was Caroline’s first year in the VPL program, and she had the best attendance of any student in the program and was a leader of Decker’s Literacy Night activity booth. Other projects Caroline and her team have taken on include making book posters, sorting books for donation, volunteering in the school library and creating bookmarks with literacy tips for other students. Young Leaders Society (YLS) Executive Member, Frances Jordan, serves as the YLS Campus Captain of Decker Middle School and has worked closely with Caroline this past year. Frances not only volunteers through YLS, but also serves as a member of UWATX’s volunteer Resource Development Committee and helps our fundraising team find new business and make important decisions. Frances and Caroline sat down together and chatted about their involvement and volunteer experiences with UWATX: Frances: Why do you volunteer through the VPL program? Caroline: My friend Helen made me come at first, but it turned out to be so fun! I like to help others. Frances:What are your favorite types of volunteer activities? Caroline: Helping with cleaning up the community, presenting to groups, and giving gifts to those in need. Frances: Describe […]
Read MoreDecker Students Lead Literacy Night Project
Decker Middle School students in our VPL program volunteered at Decker Literacy Night on February 11th. The students in the UWATX VPL (Volunteer Project Leader) program work together to learn to become the next community leaders through afterschool and out-of-school volunteer projects they coordinate and run. Decker Literacy Night was coordinated by the literacy specialist at the middle school, and UWATX’s VPL students designed a booth where they led activities for other students. Last semester, Decker’s VPL students self-selected into project teams after a discussion about social issues that resulted in identifying four need areas that the students wanted to learn more about and support. These areas include: homelessness and hunger, environmental justice, children and literacy, and food and nutrition. Each issue area then chose a name for their project team and have undertaken project planning and leadership activities to help them build their team’s experience. The Big Read team, which focuses on children and literacy, led the Literacy Night booth project. While all VPL students supported the Literacy Night booth, Big Read came up with the ideas, led the activities and served as the project spokespeople. Decker VPL students were in charge of coming up with a theme and creating their booth. They designed a creative and colorful “Critics’ Corner” to give book recommendations and generate excitement about reading among their peers. Popular titles included “The Fault In Our Stars,” “Wonder,” “Girl In a Box” and “The Hunger Games.” Two Young Leaders Society executive members, Frances Jordan and Ward Hoffman, volunteered at […]
Read MoreTexas Mutual Donates Bikes to Middle School Students
As students and their families filled the Decker Middle School cafeteria last Thursday for an end-of-camp celebratory dinner, the camp’s English teacher welcomed families by giving a speech about the enduring memories of his summers spent at his Boy Scouts camp. The events that followed left our campers with their own bank of fond memories of a summer spent learning, building new skills and making new friends. Throughout the course of the night, students presented their summer work to their peers and families, showed younger siblings the collages they made and the personal stories they recorded, and stepped forward to receive awards and recognition for their hard work and leadership. Awards given to the students included the “Change Maker Award,” “Force for Good Award” and “Spirit of Service Award.” The final and most coveted award of the night carried much anticipation; students worked for weeks on creative projects for the chance to win a brand new bike. Texas Mutual Insurance Co. built 14 new bikes to give away to selected students at Decker, complete with encouraging cards, helmets and locks, all to support the summer learning initiatives of UWATX and the students who made the choice to return to school during the summer to continue their education. At Decker Middle School, camp staff saw the bike giveaway as an opportunity for the students to display their leadership and creativity by opting in to a bike contest. Students could either give an oral presentation, draw a picture or write an essay […]
Read MoreDecker Students Learn About Financial Stability with Chase Volunteers
Getting students thinking about making financial decisions at such a young age can be a challenge, but having knowledgeable and friendly volunteers makes it much easier! “Camp Raven” is UWATX’s free summer enrichment program at Decker Middle School, where each week students learn about an issue affecting their community and complete related educational activities with volunteers. Last week, seven Chase volunteers dedicated a total of 27 hours of their time at Camp Raven, where they led financial literacy games and activities for the campers. “ I chose to spend the most on food and healthcare because taking good care of my children is the most important thing to me.” — Kevin, 7th grade student There were two exercises that the children and volunteers participated in, a market simulation exercise and a budgeting exercise. The market simulation exercise was completed using food items such as fruit snacks, mints and juice that had different values. The students were divided into assigned groups and were classified as either buyers or sellers. Sellers had to come up with a price and strategy on how to sell their “products” for the greatest amount of dollars and create ads with the product information. The buyers group made transactions using fake money based on what the advertised prices were. Following the activity, students discussed what they learned in regards to their money making decisions. The budgeting activity taught the children how to budget their candy “money” by allocating them into realistic categories. Each student based their budgeting decisions on the idea […]
Read MoreSummer Learning Day 2015
Many adults still vividly recall their time at summer camp: canoeing, arts & crafts, field day and all of the social aspects that make summer camp such an unforgettable experience. Unfortunately, these enriching programs are often reserved for middle to upper class students, as many low-income students are unable to participate due to high cost, family obligations, lack of knowledge of high quality programs or other barriers. When students are unable to access summer learning opportunities, they lose out on much more than fun. Researchers from John Hopkins estimate that roughly two-thirds of the achievement gap between low-income and higher-income students in the ninth grade is a result of unequal access to summer learning opportunities during elementary school. Low-income students lose an average of more than two months of reading achievement, while middle and high-income students actually improve their reading skills over the summer, according to the same study. This lost time contributes to the lower high school graduation rates among low-income students, which in turn sets many children up for lifetimes of economic hardship. Additionally, summer learning opportunities have been linked to increases in self-esteem, self-confidence and motivation, meaning low-income students have fewer opportunities to develop these crucial soft skills. Central Texas educators are doing their part to work to close this gap. In Austin, there are currently 64 summer programs hosted by 60 different organizations dedicated to expanding access to summer learning opportunities. These programs have enrolled over 32,000 youth and represent the combined efforts of school districts, […]
Read MoreAccenture Employees Inspire Future Women Leaders
Accenture is one of the top consulting firms in the world that brings first-class business and technology strategy to companies and organizations to carry them into the future. Accenture employees invest in local solutions for our community as well by giving back their time to speak with students who are the future. Just before school let out for summer, the Women’s Employee Resource Group at Accenture took time away from their jobs to pay a special visit to the students at Decker Middle School. The Women’s ERG shared personal stories about their lives, their careers and how they got to where they are today with the students. Accenture employees first spoke with the Decker AVID Class about college readiness before eating lunch and discussing common interests with the Tech Girls Club. Accenture employees not only got to know the students they support through employee campaign better, but also got the chance to inspire each of them by sharing their own unique stories of how they became successful women in the corporate tech world. Katy Aus, UWATX’s Out-of-School Time Coordinator for Target Graduation, said: “Students see their future when professional volunteers come out. The Tech Girls Club all have aspirations of being women in the fast-paced tech field. Accenture volunteers are real models of that and show how you can reach this goal from all different paths.” Decker Middle School is located in Manor ISD and is one of three schools UWATX offers intervention and support services to students through the […]
Read MoreUWATX Celebrates VPL Students With Documentary Screening
Students and staff from Webb, Decker and Mendez Middle Schools joined Young Leaders Society members at the Alamo Drafthouse last week for a fun end-of-year celebration. The UWATX Volunteer Project Leader (VPL) middle school program aims to transform youth into active community leaders by teaching them leadership skills they need to make meaningful and lasting change in their communities. This year, our 110 VPL students from the three campuses completed 28 volunteer projects. This resulted in 1,565 hours of time given to improving their Manor, St. John’s and Dove Springs communities! Members of the Hands On Central Texas team, who work with these kids each week, and YLS members handed out certificates and t-shirts to the students who were dedicated to the program during the 2014-2015 school year, as well as special plaques for the principals of each school. They also received popcorn and their choice of snacks and drinks during the film as a special treat. Underwater Dreams is a documentary about the story of a group of Hispanic high school students from a Title I school who build and enter an underwater robot in a national robotics competition. The students constructed the robot out of low-cost materials from Home Depot, and beat out all of the competing colleges, including powerhouse MIT. The documentary was meant to inspire the middle school students to pursue STEM fields, as well as any other dreams and future goals they have, regardless of their upbringing. Jesse Garcia, a YLS member and engineer at […]
Read MorePrincipal Alejandro Góngora Wins OST Award
The end of the school year is a time to stop and celebrate successes, and that’s especially true for Austin’s Out-of-School Time (OST) community who works tirelessly year-round. Each year, the Central Texas Afterschool Network (CTAN) bring students, families, providers and funders together for the Breakfast of Champions event, to recognize excellence and the important work these collaborators do. Educators and afterschool professionals submitted more than 100 nominations this year to nominate OST champions in 12 award categories. The winners are chosen by a nominations committee, made up of volunteer OST leaders and staff. This year, it’s a privilege for UWATX and the Target Graduation team to join the larger community in applauding one of our key partners, Principal Alejandro Góngora, who received the award for “Best OST Collaborator.” Principal Góngora of Decker Middle School in Manor ISD has been a tireless collaborator with United Way through a variety of channels related to our Middle School Matters program. This award is a testament to his responsiveness, creativity and commitment – especially after the loss of federally funded afterschool programming last year. OST staff from Camp Fire and our Volunteer Project Leadership (VPL) programs are quick to commend Principal Góngora for his willingness to collaborate on events, participate alongside students in the classroom and assist with everything from communication to translation of materials. We’re grateful to Principal Góngora for embracing collaboration before, during and after the school day. This award is a reflection of his leadership and the hard work of […]
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