Roadposts Archives - Page 4 of 8

University of Nevada Las Vegas Students Make A Difference

UNLV’s Make a Difference Day efforts on Saturday, October 22, 2011 were a GREAT Success! Over 120 UNLV students, faculty, and staff volunteered almost 400 hours at Make a Difference Day projects with Goodie Two Shoes, Spread the Word Nevada, Project Green: Friends of Pittman Wash, Tonopah Community Garden, and United Way/Albertson’s Food Drives. These volunteers helped give away 1,543 pairs of shoes with Goodie Two Shoes Foundation’s Annual Giveaway, cleaned thousands of books with Spread the Word Nevada to be distributed to underprivileged children, engaged in a community clean-up projects at Pittman Wash with Project Green: Friends of Pittman Wash to help preserve and protect the wildlife and wildlife habitat of Pittman Wash, which is a rare Mojave Desert riparian ecosystem. Students also assisted Tonopah Community Garden with regular cleaning and maintenance while decorating a wall, painting the playground, and preparing a portion of the land for future planting. Other students assisted with the collection over 10,000 lbs of food, 10,000 lbs of household items and clothes and about 3,000 toothbrushes for the United Way of Southern Nevada. (more…)

Join Governor Sandoval in Signing a 9/11 Pledge to Serve

On Thursday, September 8, 2011, Nevada’s Governor Brian Sandoval came to visit us at the Nevada Volunteers office in Reno to make his pledge to serve. In tribute to the spirit of service that followed 9/11/2001, he encouraged all Nevadans to sign our pledge to volunteer in the upcoming year from 9/11/2011 to 9/11/2012.

Alex Ellison, Project Coordinator, believes that pledging to serve will inspire Nevadans to volunteer in new and interesting ways. “Volunteering is not just cleaning up trash on the side of the street or pulling weeds at a park. Although those are fine ways to lend a helping hand, there are so many more ways people can use their skills and interests to benefit their communities. The 10^th anniversary of 9-11 is a great time to encourage people to volunteer because we remember the heightened sense of giving that immediately followed 9-11-01.”

Help us reach our goal of 500 pledges across Nevada. Go to blue.nevadavolunteers.org or bit.ly/911pledge to make your pledge today! (more…)

Expressions of Homelessness

Nevada Volunteers’ higher-education initiative has worked on Nevada’s campuses for the past 2 ½ years to promote volunteering among college youth. One of the highlights of this effort has been the Expressions of Homelessness poetry project organized through the University of Nevada Reno’s Honors Program by our VISTA, Alexandra Ellison.

Guest Post #5: The Most Rewarding Paths by Alexandra Ellison

Alexandra Ellison waits to speak at a UNR Campus Breakfast about student service and service-learning.

Our guest blogger, Alexandra Ellison, has been one of two Nevada Volunteers’ AmeriCorps VISTAs this past year. She has been a passionate advocate of service on the UNR campus in Reno, working through the Honors Program to promote service and service-learning. Her many high-powered initiatives, including a student-faculty poetry project at the local homeless shelter, earned her the distinction of being the Nevada AmeriCorps VISTA of the year. Here is her reflection on what her VISTA service has meant to her:

The past year as a VISTA, working on the UNR campus and promoting service initiatives, has truly taught me more than I could have ever expected.

Convinced that I would go right to graduate school after graduating from Northwestern, I was nervous about taking a year off. But the “year off” has proven to be a year in full speed, filled with opportunities that graduate school would not have presented to me. So fast-paced was this year, that I fear, even now, I am not quite ready to hit the books again. Rather, I am hooked to community engagement, conversations with faculty and students, and working in the belly of what has become the education beast. (more…)

The Sustainability Question

Lyndsey Bohall (center) and Alexandra Ellison, VISTA (left), speak with Kristin Pickard, Volunteer Coordinator for Northern Nevada Hopes (right), about the nonprofit's volunteer needs. Northern Nevada Hopes is Northern Nevada's premier center for HIV/AIDS treatment and care.

How do you keep a volunteer initiative going once it gets off the ground? That is the major question facing Lyndsey Bohall, our Reno 2011 Summer Associate VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America) for the Nevada Volunteers higher education initiative this summer.

Lyndsey is just beginning her sophomore year at the University of Nevada, Reno, and she already has a solid head on her shoulders as well as a tech-savvy perspective on this sustainability question. As part of the Honors Service Council and the UNR Alternative Break Club, she has become familiar with the challenges of connecting college students to service opportunities. Collecting current, in-depth information on who needs help is crucial to matching students to appropriate nonprofits according to areas of interest and skill level. (more…)

A Place Where Smiles Really Count

: Karen, the Volunteer Coordinator for the Tom Vetica Resource Center in Reno, Nevada, knows the importance of a smile to those she serves.

: Helen, an AARP volunteer, sorts mail for the homeless clients of the Tom Vetica Resource Center in Reno.

The Tom Vetica Resource Center is like a bee hive, always humming with people coming and going. A total of 15 volunteers assist a diverse population of people who need help because they are currently without a home and have no address to apply for jobs or receive services. The Resource Center gets them registered, gives them access to a computer to search for work, provides a phone to make important calls, and operates a mail service for over 500 individuals who need an address. There are also computer training and money management classes at the Community Assistance Center campus, which includes the Family, Men’s, and Women’s Shelters, and the Center coordinates with numerous other service agencies to conduct weekly outreach sessions. (more…)

Nevada AmeriCorps Week Highlights in Video

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PputeaHi2ZM]

WHO ARE THESE OUTSTANDING NEVADANS?

Left to Right: Vanessa Nesbitt, Julie McKnight, Don Edwards, Cindy Ringer, Jessica Perlick, Alexandra Ellison

All the AmeriCorps National Service Programs in Nevada are being saluted, by proclamation of Governor Brian Sandoval, during AmeriCorps Week, May 14 through 21, 2011. In conjunction with AmeriCorps Week, Nevada Volunteers, the state commission on national and community service, is recognizing five national service participants and a program director for their exemplary service to Nevada. Read more about these 2010-2011 NEVADA NATIONAL SERVICE AWARDS HONOREES:

VANESSA NESBITT—2011 Northern Nevada AmeriCorps Member of the Year, AmeriCorps Member, AmeriCorps State, Tahoe’s Connection for Families, Incline Village, NV

“Vanessa defines commitment,” explains her supervisor at Tahoe’s Connection for Families, which provides parent education and programs for infants and toddlers. “She never does anything part way!” Without any funding, she created a six week music exploration program for the center’s families, developed an accurate evaluation system to track statistics that would help the center receive grants, and forged a media/awareness campaign that brought a 28% increase in new families participating in the program, all while serving the day-to-day needs of the families that she serves. It is her ability to create trust, though, that sets her apart. People confide in Vanessa, which allows her to touch people’s lives in a special way, from her fellow AmeriCorps team members to the little boy who is getting speech therapy right now because of her intervention. (more…)

The Ripple Effect

Belinda spent this past tax season in Las Vegas preparing tax returns for low-income individuals as a volunteer.

Tax season is over, but the legacy of one volunteer’s commitment to service will linger. Belinda spent the last few months volunteering for VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance), helping low-income individuals in Las Vegas prepare their tax returns. She has a wonderful story to tell which illustrates the ripple effect of volunteering.

Belinda said:

Today was a good day in many ways. Although we are at the end of tax season and the demand for our services far outweighs our capacity, I am in good spirits. Today I was able to help a client through a really tough time by doing her return and taking the time to educate her about all the different credits she would qualify for. This client has major car repair needs looming that she could not afford to fix and every day prayed her car would not break down. She was barely making ends meet and needed extra cash to get the work done. Based on the knowledge she gained from a thorough review of her taxes we realized her refund from the year before was much less than she was entitled to receive. We prepared a 1040X that gave her even more money than she could have ever dreamed. By the end of preparing both years’ tax return, the client was in tears and extremely thankful; she kept saying thanks over and over and over again. I don’t know if we will ever see her again, but she is a fan of VITA for life!

(more…)

Priceless!

Fred Barrie prepares his talk to a Nevada Volunteers Lunch n' Learn about his new volunteer tracking software.

National Volunteer Week is a time to celebrate volunteers, and Nevada Volunteers has a gem of a volunteer to celebrate. Fred Barrie is a highly talented professional who is the best example ever of what a skilled volunteer can add to an organization. Skilled volunteers are a valuable asset, bringing know-how and experience to an organization to supplement the expertise of staff. Sometimes a skilled volunteer goes way beyond that capacity, propelling the organization into completely new realms of possibility. That is what Fred has done for Nevada Volunteers, and why we want to give him a colossal National Volunteer Week thanks!

Fred is a computer programmer who loves to explore new dimensions in software programming. He’s been working with computers for over 20 years and can’t get enough of them, it seems. When he heard our Volunteer Development Coordinator, Janet Wright, talk about the need for a good volunteer tracking software, Fred said, “I can do that.” (more…)