Meet the Rural Nevada Finalists for the 2013 Governor’s Points of Light Awards!

Each year, Nevada Volunteers is overwhelmed by the amount of nominations and the inspiring stories submitted for the Governor’s Points of Light Awards. Our distinguished panel of judges selected the following three finalists for this year. These three individuals will be honored at the awards luncheon on January 18, 2013, and the recipient of the category will be announced. Congratulations to the finalists and thank you for your service to our communities!

Rural Nevada Individual Finalists for the

2013 Governor’s Points of Light Awards

Nancy Barrett (Incline Village)

Nancy Barrett has served with the Northern Nevada Chapter of the American Red Cross for two years, and it constantly working to make the community safer. During the Caughlin and Washoe Drive fires, she helped manage the shelters and ensured that hundreds of evacuees had a safe place to go. Along with the rest of the mass care team, Nancy helped to conduct shelter surveys in all of Washoe County, Douglas County, and Carson City. She became the DSAC (Disaster Services Advisory Committee) Co-Chair, where she leads the Red Cross chapter’s disaster services and advises volunteers on how we can be better prepared. Nancy is also the Mass Care Co-Lead, which is responsible for our sheltering, feeding, and reunification services during a disaster. Nancy recently traveled to New Jersey to help Red Cross respond to Super Storm Sandy. She was also recently recognized as one of Glamour’s women of the year in New York City. Nancy works tirelessly every day to ensure to safety of everyone around her, whether she is home in Nevada or on disaster assignment in New Jersey. Her passion for the mission of the Red Cross motivates everyone around her. (more…)

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Who’s speaking at the Volunteer and Corporate Engagement Summit?

Nevada Volunteers, along with NV Energy and MGM Resorts International, bring a variety of national and regional speakers to Las Vegas that will inspire and connect corporate and nonprofit sectors. Among these speakers, Kaira Esgate, a renown speaker and cultivator of corporate-volunteer programs, opens the day with an inspiring and exciting session.

“The Intersection of Impact – Leveraging Multi-Sector Resources”

The volunteer ecosystem is more effective when all sectors participate in its evolution. Volunteerism doesn’t exist in a single sector and the responsibility of successful volunteer engagement resides beyond nonprofits alone. We are interdependent when it comes to this work and together we can increase the impact of volunteerism by working to improve the system across all sectors (i.e., nonprofit, private, faith-based, education, government). Learn the key principles of the Reimagining Service effort from Kaira Esgate at the Volunteer and Corporate Engagement Summit!

Kaira Esgate

Kaira Esgate serves as the Executive Director of Reimagining Service, a national multi-sector coalition dedicated to converting good intentions into greater impact through increased volunteer engagement capacity nationwide. As Executive Director, Kaira works with the Reimagining Service Council and other stakeholders to increase effective practice, gather new insights via research, and encourage investment to effectively leverage volunteer talent to address true community needs. (more…)

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Amass for AmeriCorps Update

 

Thank you to our amazing supporters that continue to help us spell AmeriCorps!

I found out about AmeriCorps from friends while attending the University of Nevada Las Vegas, who recommended the program to me because they knew of my desire to help others. After researching the program, asking questions, and speaking with National Service Alums, I realized that this was a perfect opportunity for me because of my skills and passion for helping people and my community.

I am a Site Coordinator for Communities In Schools within the United Way of Southern Nevada AmeriCorps program. I assist students with their homework, make sure they have their basic needs met, and guide them to graduate at a local high school and Community Center. Some of these basic needs include personal items, clothes, food for their families, paper, pencils and pens. If there is something that the student needs, Communities in Schools finds a way to help the student, which supports them in (more…)

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Meet the Northern Nevada Governor’s Points of Light Finalists!

Each year, Nevada Volunteers is overwhelmed by the amount of nominations and the inspiring stories submitted for the Governor’s Points of Light Awards. Our distinguished panel of judges selected the following three finalists for this year. These three individuals will be honored at the awards luncheon on January 18, 2013, and the recipient of the category will be announced. Congratulations to the finalists and thank you for your service to our communities!

Northern Nevada Individual Finalists for the

2013 Governor’s Points of Light Awards

 

Steve Burns

Steve Burns has been a volunteer with the Washoe County School District since January of 2011. Since that time, Steve has offered 1680 total hours tutoring Algebra students at Vaughn Middle School five days a week, five class periods a day. Said one parent of a student Steve has tutored, “Kids used to make fun of her and even teachers would say my daughter couldn’t do it. Now she’s confident in herself and is in the GATE program. He changed her entire life. My daughter is now talking about preparing to apply to competitive colleges, something she never thought of doing before.” After a rewarding career, Steve found even greater pleasure in tutoring students and seeing them achieve results they didn’t think were possible. He says that at the age of 65, he has finally found his calling. (more…)

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Nevada Volunteers ♥ Nevada’s Volunteers!

Nevada Volunteers wanted to share the love and gratitude of nonprofit’s volunteers and volunteer programs. Each day from February 1st to February 14th, we selected one highlight and shared the love through Facebook and Twitter. Here’s the collection of all those that participated. We had such a great response and it truly inspired each of us in the Nevada Volunteers office reading about the great things that volunteers are doing for our communities!

Kelly Penfold with ACCEPT

Kelly Penfold has been volunteering for ACCEPT for about two years now. Her last few months of volunteerism hours has been 20 – 25 hours per week. She is courteous, efficient and a blessing to our organization. In fact, she was just hired on as a part-time employee effective February 1st because of her dedication over the last two years. Volunteer service can eventually lead into a position with a non-profit! Thanks Kelly for all your volunteer hours and welcome aboard as an employee. (more…)

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MLK Day: Hard Work Makes A Dream Come True

Bright and early on MLK Day, 35 Great Basin Institute Nevada Conservation Corps (NCC) AmeriCorps members gathered with volunteers from Habitat for Humanity to build a house for a family in need. Members spent the day helping the single mother create a home of her own, and worked tirelessly to clean up three empty lots surrounding the house so that she could feel pride in her neighborhood when she looked out her window.

Krista Johnson, NCC member, shared her experience, ” I was initially disappointed that I wouldn’t be working on the house and would be cleaning up trash and pulling weeds at a vacant lot across the street until I realized the view the family would have from the front would be that of the vacant lot. It reminded me that a house never stands alone; it’s always a part of a neighborhood, the way a person is never just a single person but part of a community. By helping beautify and improve the neighborhood, we were helping the family too. In the end, I felt great about our work on MLK Day.” (more…)

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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 10th 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…)

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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.
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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…)

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