Kerbey Lane Cafe just wrapped up their fourth employee giving campaign and, thanks to their incredible team, it was huge success. Between their seven store locations, Kerbey team members donated over $37,000 to UWATX. Kerbey team members also volunteered over 650 hours giving back to the community. In addition to volunteer activities staff members, Rose Ann, Amanda and Karli, also committed months of work preparing, planning and helping to execute the first annual Ruthless Good event. Kerbey Lane volunteers are always the last to leave a project and can always be counted on to do the dirty work! If we need help, we know that we can count on Kerbey Lane to show up, never stop moving and stay until the place is cleaner than we found it. Kerbey attracts creative and passionate employees and it has been a great asset to have them in on the planning stages of major events, or to give them a paintbrush and see what they can do with a playground. Volunteers from Kerbey Lane Café can be counted on to participate in every Day of Caring that we host. They often work on a variety of projects that support health and access to food, along with projects that support the early childhood development centers that they are so passionate about. Each Kerbey Lane location is paired with a local child development center and organizes projects to support the children and teachers at their designated center throughout the year. Over the last four years, Kerbey Lane volunteers […]
Read MoreVolunteer Spotlight: Karli Isiyel
Karli Isiyel is the Creative Director at Kerbey Lane Cafe, and a stupendous volunteer and partner of United Way for Greater Austin! Kerbey Lane is graciously donating all of their proceeds from their anniversary celebration on May 5 to UWATX, so consider stopping by for some pancakes to support our friends and neighbors. Karli has volunteered with United Way in many different ways. She served on our logistics committee for Ruthless Good: The Great Austin Scavenger Hunt and she helps mobilize the team at Kerbey to get involved in volunteer projects that support UWATX’s Center Project supporting early childhood education facilities that provide subsidized space for low-income children to receive quality child care. We love Karli and are grateful for her thoughts about volunteerism at Kerbey Lane Cafe and what our community means to her. How long have you and Kerbey Lane Cafe been involved with United Way for Greater Austin? We have been volunteering with UWATX for 5 years now! What a wild ride it has been 🙂 What is your favorite memory of volunteering? I always enjoy making green pancakes at Ronald McDonald house, everyone is eager to help and you get to hang out with the people that may be going through a rough time in their lives and make their day a little brighter – pic attached of me and my friend Ronny. Clearly I’m a visual person – big surprise. As a longtime Austinite, what is your favorite thing about our exceptional community? I think being a native Austinite, I […]
Read MoreSpring Play To Learn Classes Graduate
As our Play To Learn program runs on a school year schedule, we just wrapped up our spring semester and are launching our summer groups with about 30 families participating. This year so far, a total of 204 families graduated from Play To Learn or an extension class through YMCA, which is a combination of Play To Learn and YMCA’s Early Learning Readiness program. Through Play To Learn, not only did young children leave with new skills but parents learned how to foster their child’s optimal development at home. Parents and children attended classes together with the following themes: • Social skills • Gross motor skills • Fine motor skills • Language Development • Emotional regulation skills • Geometry • Numeracy • Emerging Literacy “Honestly, this program did help my daughter a lot. My children are naturally very shy and now my daughter is less introverted and more social. I really did see a huge change in my daughter and I highly recommend the class. The reason I never missed a class is because I could tell my daughter loved being there and benefited greatly.” –Maria R. Attendees also learned digital literacy skills by practicing various tasks and using the pre-loaded educational apps on the Samsung tablets provided by United Way for Greater Austin. It is important to bridge the “digital divide” between low-income families and their more affluent peers now more than ever. Internet access is no longer a luxury but a necessity for individuals to complete homework, fill […]
Read MoreKerbey Lane Café Makes Huge Community Impact
Pancakes and queso are only some of the few great things that come from the delicious Austin landmark, Kerbey Lane Cafe! Kerbey Lane makes giving back to the community a top priority. Through their 36 years of operating, they have supported the Austin community by contributing their time, resources and energy to local organizations. Kerbey Lane Cafe emphasizes the importance of philanthropy by supporting UWATX by running employee giving campaigns at each location and volunteering year-round at different events, such as our Spring Day of Caring and Fall Day of Caring and one-off projects like beautifying Webb Middle School and childcare centers. Kerbey Lane CEO, Mason Ayer is also a devoted UWATX Board Member who exemplifies giving from the top down is what makes a campaign successful. On May 5th, Kerbey Lane Cafe celebrated their 36th anniversary by generously donating 100 percent of their profits from all seven restaurants to UWATX. Yesterday, Kerbey Lane team members and CEO Mason Ayer, who also serves on the UWATX Board of Directors, spent time volunteering at Webb Middle School’s field day. Volunteers painted signs for the talent show, assisted teachers with cleaning out rooms for the summer and even built a brand new shed to hold supplies for the school’s garden. They also took the opportunity to present a check for $50,037 to UWATX CEO, David C. Smith. The check was made up from donations collected from Kerbey Lane’s employee giving campaign as well as the profits from their 36th anniversary gift. A few years ago, Kerbey Lane […]
Read MoreVPL Graduates Celebrate at Kerbey Lane Cafe
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 MoreStudents Spend Spring Break Volunteering at Ronald McDonald House
While some of their classmates laid on a beach or drove cross-country, some students from Webb Middle School chose to spend part of their Spring Break giving back to others. The VPL program is a UWATX initiative and a collaboration between the organization’s efforts to support three area middle schools—Webb, Mendez and Decker Middle Schools. Students participating in the afterschool VPL program learn how to take a leading role in changing their community each week. VPL students from Webb Middle School were charged with developing, planning, coordinating and executing a volunteer project on their own terms. The Webb students chose to support the Ronald McDonald House because they wanted to support families staying at the “home-away-from-home” while their children are being treated at Austin-area hospitals. Past graduates from the VPL program who are now in high school or beyond, members of UWATX’s Young Leaders Society, F.O.R.C.E. dance team members and Kerbey Lane Cafe volunteers assisted the Webb students in making breakfast for the 20 families who are staying at the Ronald McDonald House. The menu included green pancakes made with Kerbey Lane Cafe’s famous pancake batter, as well other traditional breakfast foods, such as hash browns, oatmeal and fruit skewers. The students also made St. Patrick’s Day cards for the families and passed them around after the breakfast. The students and volunteers took a tour of the Ronald McDonald House after the breakfast to learn more about the organization. Shoutout to these exceptional future leaders of Austin for spending their […]
Read MoreUWATX’s Scavenger Hunt Encourages Team-Building and Philanthropy
Looking for an innovative way to encourage philanthropy and team-bonding with your employees? Sign up for a UWATX Scavenger Hunt! The purpose of the UWATX Scavenger Hunt is to highlight the work United Way does in throughout the community through its own programs and the work of its funded partners. This interactive, team-building exercise serves dual purposes by allowing participants to engage in community service while seeing firsthand what their donor dollars support, and even generate revenue for our organization. Over the course of four hours, teams of 4-5 people will have the opportunity to gain a better understanding of the areas we serve and the needs in our community. We believe that giving of one’s time is a valuable way to connect to local causes. Organized team-building activities have also been shown to increase employee morale and loyalty to an organization. The scavenger hunt takes teams on four different adventures throughout Austin: a trivia challenge, a photo challenge, scavenger items and a mystery clue. Mystery Clue: Teams receive an envelope that contains a clue about a mystery location. They are given a small window of time to arrive at the location and are tasked with completing a short activity, usually a small volunteer project. Photo Challenge: Teams are given a list of 20-25 local people, places and things. They must successfully photograph their entire team with as many of these items as possible to earn points. Trivia Challenge: While hustling from place to place in the car, teams will be […]
Read MoreWhat’s Inside a Play To Learn Kit?
We are currently prepping to serve new families and children through our Play To Learn program in Spring 2016. UWATX launched Play To Learn in 2012 to coach parents on fostering school readiness at home for children who do not attend childcare. Parents and their children attend classes at accessible neighborhood locations, such as libraries, and learn together from early learning coaches. We could not serve so many families without the help of volunteer groups, mostly from companies we run campaigns with, who assist us by setting up tablets and putting together Play To Learn take home kits. But what exactly makes up the Play To Learn curriculum? Each week, the classes have a a different theme and curriculum to go along with that theme. The eight-week program follows these themes, in order: social/emotional skills, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, language development, social/emotional skills, geometry, emerging literacy and numeracy. Each week’s kit contains a book, a handout and hands-on materials needed for the lesson, such as construction paper, paints, stickers, etc. For example, the week on language development contains a Curious George book, Curious George puppets, journals, stickers and colored pencils. The puppets have questions on the back in both English and Spanish, for parents to ask their children at home to further promote language development. We also provide families with Samsung Galaxy tablets so that they can continue learning at home after each week’s class. Before the program begins, volunteers ready the tablets by setting up a Gmail account for […]
Read MoreUWATX Supports Kerbey Lane Café
If you’ve watched the news in the last 24 hours, you’ve likely heard a media report about Kerbey Lane Café. Unfortunately, it’s not the typical positive story about Kerbey Lane’s mouthwatering pancakes and queso, or its good work in the community. Instead, it’s a disgusting story about one bigoted customer who made racist comments toward two Muslim customers at the restaurant’s Guadalupe Street location near UT. It’s a sickening situation. No one deserves to be treated the way these young women were treated. We know the manager who was at Kerbey Lane Café Sunday morning wishes she would have handled things differently. We also know Kerbey Lane Café CEO Mason Ayer is deeply saddened by what happened in his restaurant. You see, we really know Mason, and we really know and love Kerbey Lane Café. Kerbey Lane Café is a committed supporter of United Way for Greater Austin, and Mason is a trusted partner, board member and dedicated community servant. The company’s employees provide hundreds of hours of community service to United Way for Greater Austin and others each year. Kerbey Lane and its employees raise significant money for our community. The company is a model employer. Simply put, Kerbey Lane Café is an Austin original. It is part of the fabric of what makes Austin greater. Thank you, Mason, for your sincere statement of apology. We support you. http://www.kerbeylanecafe.com/an-apology-from-our-ceo/ Sincerely, Your friends at United Way for Greater Austin
Read MoreKerbey Lane Cafe Features Middle School Community Art Projects
It started with “community,” and the web grew to include “pride,” “diversity,” “friendship,” and “health.” Students at Decker Middle School drew a word web to show how ideas are connected in order to guide their planning for a community art project. Throughout the month of October, students at all three Middle School Matters campuses worked to complete 20 canvasses that illustrate varying perspectives on community. The project aimed to show students how art can be used to start a conversation or spark community change. The paintings, designed and created by Volunteer Project Leader (VPL) students will be on display at Kerbey Lane Café at the Southwest location starting on November 2nd. In VPL, students plan, implement and reflect on volunteer projects that match their interests, and the paintings show broad variations on the theme of making a positive contribution to your community. A bright nature scene reminds us to recycle, multi-colored handprints underpinning a Spanish phrase celebrate shared space, and cartoon animals promote self-acceptance with the phrase, “There’s nothing wrong with who you like. There’s nothing wrong with who you are”. By displaying student work, Kerbey Lane Café recognizes these middle school students as leaders in their community and creates an uncommon opportunity for middle school students to start a community-wide conversation. Make sure to stop by the Kerbey Lane Café on William Cannon to see the works of art for yourself, or attend our Big Game Superbowl party in February where we will auction off some of the pieces. Learn […]
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