All are welcome to attend! On Saturday, November 2, 2013, Ronan Farrow, former aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will be on the campus of the University of Nevada, Reno to deliver his signature keynote for ASUN's Civic Engagement…
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…)
How do you describe it? The impact volunteering has—not on the person who receives the help, but on the volunteer. Volunteering is good for your health, good for your resume, but there is also an emotional charge that comes with service which can uplift you in profound and transformative ways. That feeling is at the heart of one of the stories a young volunteer named Kevin told me.
Kevin, one of our UNR student work group participants, was an AmeriCorps member before entering college, working with inner-city kids in Philadelphia. He was fresh out of high school and had no idea what to study, so he decided to give back through a national service program. One of the boys Kevin had worked extra hard to encourage took him aside one day to ask his advice, and in the course of the conversation, the boy told Kevin, “Wow, you are so smart. You are my hero.” (more…)
Stephanie reports on the student surveys for the Advisory Committee.
It’s the end of the college year for students on Nevada campuses and also time to wrap up the student work groups that Nevada Volunteers organized at colleges across the state for their Higher Education Initiative. Stephanie has been part of this initiative to inspire more students to become involved in their surrounding communities, and she has been quite busy building a bridge.
Stephanie is a graduate student at the University of Nevada, Reno, and received her undergraduate degree in Massachusetts at a college that required at least 40 hours of community service to graduate. There were resources on that campus directed toward helping students meet the requirement, but Nevada colleges and universities have no such requirement. Stephanie says of Nevada, “I see the bridge that needs to be built between the campus and nonprofits, and it feels good to be working toward building that bridge.” (more…)