Thursday, May 24, 2012

Paly Service Day: High School Students Get Involved


Many thanks to ALL the students who participated in Paly Service Day 2012! There were 196 students on field trips serving 17 local agencies, and another 300+ students serving 13 additional agencies on campus during lunch and the tutorial period. Our students have documented more than 125,000 hours of community engagement since we started tracking data 4 years ago. Get Involved, Paly!

Students Sign Up to Volunteer for Light the Night!
Paly's Free the Children Club Raises Awareness for Children's Rights
Celebrating Service with Rick's Ice Cream, Sponsored by Club MAC
16 Simple Ways to Serve on Campus
Palo Alto Online: Palo Alto residences get new curb appeal, disaster relief project.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Students Volunteer and Promote the Arts

Another great Volunteens video produced by Carolina Moraes-Liu and her daughter Juliana, this time promoting Palo Alto's Teen Arts Council. Local teenagers do good by sharing their passion for the Arts!

Yes, this IS community engagement. 


Sunday, May 13, 2012

National Letter Carriers Food Drive, What Happened?

Maybe your neighborhood was different, we had one lone blue bag sitting near our mailbox with a food bank donation of tuna, beans, and peanut butter. In the past, I remember the postal service distributing bags about a week before to remind us. And the plea seemed to come straight from the letter carriers, whom I love to support. Did they run out of funding to distribute the bags this year for "Stamp Out Hunger"?

I stopped at CVS about 10:00pm on Thursday night to restock our pantry with paper goods, and the friendly cashier offered me a special blue plastic bag to fill with non-perishables and leave for the mailman to pick up on Saturday morning. "They just sent us these bags yesterday," she said, "we'll never be able to use them up by tomorrow!" I told her I promote community service at a high school and she hefted a stack over the counter, "Then, can you help to spread these around?" I said I would, but was swamped with my Friday-only Attendance Secretary job and failed to get the bags distributed. 

The only way to be a food bank evangelist this weekend was to participate and hope my neighbors would see our blue bag hanging on the mailbox and follow suit. The problem was that unless they happened to visit CVS on Thursday or Friday--and what are the chances of that--they would not receive the specially designated donation bag. I did not see a single sack anywhere on Saturday, other than at our house. Maybe it's time to go back to the former means of distributing "Stamp Out Hunger" bags via the post office. Our local food banks need all the donations they can get, even if the postal carriers have to spend a little more time on the job distributing the bags. Isn't "Stamp Out Hunger" their signature event?

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Fashion Show Fundriaser for Unicef

"Fashion for Unicef", produced by Grace Owen with Meredith Owen, stylist.
May 5, 2012
Kitsch Couture, Palo Alto, Ca 



How much fun can a group of high school girls have putting outfits together and modeling in a fashion show for a cause? Grace Owen had a fabulous vision of her community service project for the Living Skills class at Palo Alto High School. After months of planning and organizing and consulting with the owner of the store where she works, she pulled her group together and recruited her newly graduated sister, Meredith, to help with styling for the day. We added platters with snacks and drinks to make it scrumptiously rewarding for the guests.
  
  • Money raised for Unicef: $117 
  • Awareness for Children's Causes: Beyond Measure 
  • Good clean fun for high school students doing good works: All day long!

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Santa Clara County Community Service and Internship Opportunities

This is a good listing from the Santa Clara County Office of Education, which supports my work this year to build the community engagement program at Palo Alto High School (Paly.net/service). Students find purpose in making post-high school plans by pursuing meaningful service-learning and community engagement opportunities!