As the 2015 LIVE UNITED Campaign gets under way, we can reflect on the many ways our community comes together to advance the common good. United Way of Story County (UWSC) focuses on education, income and health – the building blocks for a good quality of life. We know we can’t do it alone, so we recruit people and organizations who bring passion, expertise and resources to get things done. For the next few columns, we’ll be highlighting each of these three areas, and we’ll highlight some recent developments. First, we’ll feature education.
United Way knows that a strong education is paramount for a great quality of life. By investing in this issue area, youth have access to the building blocks for academic success.
Led by two full-time AmeriCorps VISTA members, UWSC convenes community partners to work on the areas of school attendance, school readiness and out-of-school learning through the Grade-Level Reading campaign. All three areas are important to a child’s academic success, and United Way has recently put considerable effort into summer learning.
To help impact those students who need additional support during summer – a critical time away from school, UWSC worked with many community partners to plan and execute a summer program in Ames and Nevada. UWSC VISTAs, with the help of additional summer AmeriCorps members, staff from community partners, and many volunteers, worked with both school districts for the third year to impact the lives of many students this summer.
UWSC and other partners helped make a case two years ago for expanding the existing academic program from three weeks to six weeks in the Ames school district and advocated to start a program in Nevada. In addition, UWSC has led the planning efforts to execute the enrichment programs to further decrease summer learning loss.
Activities this year focused on science, technology, reading, engineering, art and math with a “superhero” theme. Kids planted gardens, created comic books, listened to stories from local firefighters and police officers, learned about local heroes like Kate Shelley, tried unfamiliar vegetables, extracted DNA with NADC scientists, learned how to be prepared in emergency situations, wrote letters to community members and received books to keep at the end of the summer.
Of course, we couldn’t have pulled the programs off without the help of so many partners and volunteers. In Ames, there were 218 volunteers who worked almost 800 hours total, and Nevada had 72 volunteers working more than 800 hours combined! The value of this summer’s volunteer work totaled more than $17,000. Also, there were many representatives from businesses, partner agencies and clubs (too many organizations to list!) who brought fun programs to the kids and helped lead the activities … it was a true community effort that positively impacted 272 kids!
The momentum is building, and we’re excited to share how we’re moving the needle in this area. We invite you to see that great things happen when we live united. You can give, you can advocate and you can volunteer.