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 MoreMendez Students Give Thanks By Sharing a Meal with Their Community
Mendez Middle School students held their second annual Thanksgiving Family Night on November 20th. Mendez’s free afterschool enrichment program is coordinated through Boys and Girls Club and ACE-Austin as part of our out-of-school time (OST curriculum), is open to any student at the school and hosts an annual Thanksgiving event for families of students to come meet afterschool staff and learn about what their kids do in the program. Before their community Thanksgiving feast, students created ornaments for community events, made holiday-themed bookmarks to be distributed with donated books and created cards as gifts for family and friends. Broadway Bank donated seven Thanksgiving meal kits that were raffled off to families who attended. Each kit included the makings of a delicious holiday meal, including a ham, corn, green beans, cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes, an H-E-B gift card and more. Over 97% of students at Mendez are economically disadvantaged. “Broadway Bankers give with a thankful heart during the holiday season and throughout the year. We established Care Corps to honor the legacy of giving handed down from our founders Col. Charles E. Cheever Sr. and Betty Cheever. Care Corps serves 13,000 hours with more than a hundred projects throughout the year. For Broadway Bank being “here for good” means putting our community first because we live and work here too. Giving back is how we do our part to keep our local communities strong and thriving.” –Jackie Oliver, Broadway Bank Arthur Castillo, Director of Boys & Girls Club, sees this as an opportunity to […]
Read MoreMendez Summer Program Served 60 Students
This summer, students from Mendez Middle School pitched tents, made films, dissected frogs and went on service field trips to supplement their school-year learning and learn new skills. After running a successful summer program at Decker Middle School last year, United Way for Greater Austin made an additional investment in summer learning at Mendez Middle School in Dove Springs to contribute to an academically-engaged and adventure-filled summer experience for more than 60 middle school students. Boys & Girls Club of the Austin Area, 21st Century ACE Austin and a cohort of energetic and creative Mendez teachers worked side by side to lead students in projects that bolstered school-year learning and introduced new concepts and activities. In reading classes, students read a community novel about making tough choices, which they discussed enthusiastically in literature circles. This provided a safe space to discuss challenges such as social choices, gangs and family life, while also encouraging students to practice reading aloud and helping one another with word comprehension. In math class, students set out to find price estimates for a house, a car and an education, and then tied budgeting skills and internet research skills with their own, unique life ambitions to correspond to the importance of planning for the future. Afternoons allowed students the chance to build new friendships and exit their comfort zones by tackling projects like making their own films, learning about aviation, building a campsite in a survival scenario and much more. Vendors including Camp Fire, Phoenix Arising, Austin […]
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 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 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 […]
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