2018 IN REVIEW

By: Generation SERVE Staff

​2018 has been a banner year at Generation SERVE as we expanded our opportunities for families to serve, launched new programs to engage kids from preschool through adolescence and brought even more support to our nonprofit partners across Central Texas!

This year, over 7,200 children from nearly 3,500 families volunteered through our programs, contributing over 16,500 volunteer hours to our community! We hosted a whopping 981 Family Volunteering activities serving 104 nonprofit partners, including 12 new partners. Our calendar also grew by 7% as we added new opportunities for families to volunteer together with new and existing partners!

To bring the benefits of community service to our youngest helpers, stewarding them along our service pathway from an early age, we launched our Little Helpers program earlier this year! Little Helpers Learn & Play is a 6-week program giving preschoolers an overview of issues in our community and how they can help. Thirty one 3- to 5-year-olds and their parents participated in volunteer activities serving animals, seniors, kids, people experiencing poverty and the environment. Our spring and summer sessions were so popular that we hosted two sessions in the fall! We look forward to bringing this program to more families in the new year.

Our Service Learning Program, which is an even deeper dive into community needs for 3rd through 5th graders, grew by 55% in 2018! We had 82 children participate in our programs focused on five service areas. This year, we added sessions focused on helping seniors and helping kids. While each Service Learning program session includes options to help animals and the environment, our third option will continue to rotate between our three service areas focused on helping specific populations of people (kids, seniors and people experiencing poverty).

We love watching kids develop through our programs and, for the first time, we saw six Service Learning Program participants from previous years participate in our Youth Leadership Program as they entered middle school! Our Youth Leadership Program gives middle and high schoolers the opportunity to hone their leadership skills through service by leading volunteer activities, educating younger kids about community issues and organizing fundraisers and donation drives for nonprofits across Austin. We served nearly twice as many teens this year through our Youth Leadership Program as we did last year! Our expanded capacity was possible because we split our summer Youth Leadership Program into June and July sessions, allowing us to accommodate 24 middle schoolers and 24 high schoolers this year (versus 16 middle schoolers and 10 high schoolers in 2017). 

These incredible teens contributed over 2,000 hours in community service to partners across Austin! That time included over 1,000 hours of training, nearly 870 hours leading volunteer activities with families and over 130 hours on independent and group service projects. These same teens raised nearly $5,400 benefiting Foundation Communities, STARRY and Generation SERVE!

We also expanded our teen programs this year beyond our Youth Leadership Program. Through a partnership with the Jeremiah Program, we provided teens with an in-depth, ongoing volunteer commitment over the course of a few months. Thirteen teens and their parents provided childcare for single moms served by the Jeremiah Program. Our Teen Advisory Board also launched Teen Service Days this year! With staff support, our Teen Leaders hosted 42 of these drop-off events where teens could serve alongside their peers. These Teen Service Days engaged 190 teens in over 800 hours of service with 22 nonprofits in our community! 

We are thrilled to engage even more kids, teens and families in service in 2019! Next year marks our 10th birthday and we cannot wait to celebrate it with you!

Families stock shelves with food donations at Hope Food Pantry.

A Little Helpers participant tends to Adelphi Acre Community Garden.

Service Learning Program participants show off their extension projects.

High school-aged teens in the July Cohort of our Youth Leadership Program pose for a group photo.

Teens help facilitate Austin Humane Society’s Teddy Bear Surgery event at a Teen Service Day.

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Want to help us reach more families, provide deeper volunteer experiences and support more nonprofit partners in 2019? 

Give the gift that keeps on giving with an end-of-year gift to Generation SERVE!

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