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Celebrate Mentoring through Murals
Giving Back to Area IV!
Raise the Farm
Color Me In: Clothesline Project
Spring Garden Festival and Neighborhood Cleanup
Location: Boys & Girls Club of Brockton - 233 Warren Avenue Brockton, MA 02301
Start Time: 9:30am
End Time: 2:00pm
The Brockton Youth Council will celebrate Oportunity To Serve by creating mural canvas for local non-profits and community groups working hard to make Brockton a better place for youth.Volunteers will be paired with local middle school children who will work together on a specific organization's logo to paint on canvas. The volunteers and young people will learn about the organization and the resources that they provide. The adult and high school volunteers will also be responsible for helping the younger volunteers that they are paired with paint a mural that represents an organization in Brockton. However, a more meaningful peice of their role is the mentorship that they will offer with these young people throughout the course of their project. When they first arrive, they will be paired with a young person, receive the material needed and successfully complete the mural to be donated at a later time to the organization.
Once this project is finished, volunteers will join other Boys & Girls Club of Brockton volunteers to complete the following service projects:
- Collect and sort school supplies for Brockton’s School on Wheels program
- Collect and organize non-perishable food items for Greater Boston Food Bank
- Make and send get-well cards for Armed Forces troops
- Make and send Boys & Girls Club Word Search sheets and friendship bracelets to Brockton youth in local hospitals
- Clean inside and the perimeter of the Warren Avenue Club and Brockton Teen Center
- Paint walls inside the Warren Avenue Club
- Plant flower seeds in the garden surrounding the Brockton Teen Center
- Clean the surrounding neighborhoods.
To register for this project, click here
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Location:
225 Windsor St. Cambridge, MA 02139
Start Time: 9:00am
End Time: 3:00pm
Giving Back to Area IV is a project for Tutoring Plus students and volunteers to help pick up trash in the Area IV neighborhood of Cambridge, make sandwiches for the homeless in Central Square and collect food for the local food pantry at the Margaret Fuller House. Area IV has two small parks; Clement Morgan Park and The Green Rose Heritage Park. The Margaret Fuller House is a 100 year old neighborhood house in Area IV. By the end of the day, as a result of the volunteer effort, Area IV streets and local parks will be trash free, homeless families and individuals will have been given sandwiches, and the Margaret Fuller food pantry will be stocked with canned foods, cereals, pasta etc. The volunteers will also leave with a greater understanding of the Area IV neighborhood!
All volunteers will meet for breakfast and Tutoring Plus youth will give a presentation about the Area IV neighborhood, the homeless population and the Margaret Fuller Food Pantry. After breakfast everyone will be assigned to teams. Volunteer teams will be assigned jobs for the morning. Morning volunteers will be assigned to specific locations for collecting trash, making sandwiches for the homeless and/or sorting the food for the food pantry. After lunch, teams will be reassigned to new jobs; handing out sandwiches to the homeless in Central Square, delivering food to the Margaret Fuller House and continuing to pick up trash in Area IV.
Note: Volunteers will need to wear clothes that they don’t mind getting dirty in. They’ll need good walking shoes so we can walk around the whole neighborhood.
To register for this project, click here
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Boston Location:
555 Dudley Street Dorchester, MA 02125
Lynn Location: 120 Munroe St Lynn, MA 01901
Start Time: 9:00am
End Time: 1:00pm
Since 1991, The Food Project has brought together teenagers from the city and the suburbs to grow food on rural and urban farms, and distribute that food to Hunger Relief Organizations, Farmer’s Markets and through our Community Supported Agriculture programs. They also support home gardeners through our Build-a-Garden program, where we build raised bed box gardens at people’s homes. For Opportunity to Serve Day 2011, The Food Project will host 75 volunteers, half of which will serve at the Lynn site, and half of which will serve at the Boston site. Each site will host two simultaneous projects: field work on The Food Project's farms and Build-a-Garden. April is a busy month on the farms. During this time, the farms need considerable help preparing for the upcoming growing season, readying the soil, building beds and weeding in anticipation of planting crops. Money raised through sales of produce throughout the season allows The Food Project to continue the work of distributing food to Hunger Relief Organizations and farmer’s markets in historically low-access neighborhoods, so spring volunteers are directly contributing to fulfilling their mission. Much like the farms, the Build-a-Garden program is in full swing in April because families want to have their garden boxes in time for planting vegetables. The program provides home gardeners with garden boxes in their backyards. Many urban communities have lead contaminated soil, making in-ground gardening hazardous, and many people are lacking fertile soil in which to grow. Garden boxes increase access to fresh food by providing gardeners with a safe, productive place to grow food.
Volunteers for Opportunity To Serve will go through a modified version of The Food Project’s Saturday volunteer program. Volunteers will report to one of TFP’s two urban farm sites. At each site, the day begins with an introduction by TFP youth to the mission and vision of the organization, followed by an educational icebreaker activity. Following the icebreaker, volunteers at each site will be assigned to one of five work crews, each led by a teen Crew Leader, an Assistant Crew Leader, and often an additional youth. The youth leaders will instruct volunteers on their tasks for the day, and work alongside them providing guidance and support. The youth are also available to share more about their experience at The Food Project, and more broadly as part of the food justice movement. Two work crews at each site will be assigned to work with TFP’s Build-a-Garden program. These volunteers will work with their Crew Leader and a TFP staff person to build raised bed gardens in private residences. Volunteers will work together to load soil, wood and other materials into TFP vehicles, deliver them to homes, and assemble them on-site as part of the delivery, including drilling the box beds together and filling them with soil. The remaining crews will remain on the farm. With their Crew Leader, volunteers will receive a brief introduction to farm etiquette and begin their assigned task. Volunteers may be assigned to loosening soil with a garden fork, digging a path, light weeding or another task to prepare the farm for Spring planting. At the end of the day, the five crews at each site will reconvene on the farm. The youth will lead volunteers in a reflection activity, allowing volunteers to meditate on the day’s work.
Note: Because of the demanding nature of the farmwork we ask our volunteers to perform, we ask that youth volunteers be enrolled in ninth grade at a minimum, and that all volunteers have the ability to perform physical work and to lift 40 pounds. The Food Project requires all volunteers to wear work-appropriate clothing. This includes closed toed shoes, clothing that is weather-appropriate (e.g. a raincoat in case of rain) and that they feel comfortable getting dirty. Volunteers may also wish to bring gardening gloves.
To register for this project, click here
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Location:
1350 Tremont St Boston, Massachusetts 02120
Start Time: 12:00pm
End Time: 6:00pm
This event, co-led by the Boston Public Health Commission's Start Strong Initiative and Girls' LEAP, will begin with members from Start Strong and LEAP welcoming everyone and introducing the event. After they have introduced everyone, Casa Myrna Vasquez, an organization dedicated to help women in shelters, will introduce a project that will require volunteers to create care baskets for the shelter. After the care packages are finished, lunch will be served. After lunch, speakers from the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center (BARCC) and Girls' LEAP will talk about their experiences and how they’ve grown from it. After the speakers, volunteers will break into different groups for both Start Strong and LEAP and have the youth peer leaders from each organization lead various workshops. After workshops all volunteers will gather together as a whole and unveil the clothesline that was done the previous week and debrief and leave time for discussion and an open mic for the teens. All of the Start Strong and LEAP workshops and activities will be designed for co-ed groups, so male and female participants can take part in each segment of the day.
The volunteer roles for the project are to assemble the various care packages, spread awareness about the Project and its focus during a ‘peace’ walk, engage in the workshops for both Start Strong and LEAP and actively participate during the Clothesline Project Ceremony. Everyone who attends this event will be a volunteer, so they will easily be able to participate in every role. Each person will put together as many care packages as they possibly can, which includes assembling the needed supplies, securing them into the baskets and wrapping them up. Different activities will be planned for each of these programs and the volunteers are just expected to be fully engaged in all they’re a part of. The Ceremony will then require the volunteers to be helpful audience members and to keep their experiences from the day in mind during the presentations.
Note: Please wear comfortable clothing that will allow you to do minimal physical activity (self-defense introductory workshop and peace walk).
To register for this project, click here
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Location:
9 Castle Street Worcester, MA 01609
Start Time: 9:00am
End Time: 4:00pm
The Spring Garden Festival is an opportunity for farmers and farm organizations, including youth organizations, to come and exchange farming techniques, celebrate their successes, and gear up for a new season of gardening. There will be urban gardeners from approximately 40 community gardens attending the event, including the two of the Regional Environmental Council's YouthGROW farms. Volunteers will arrive at the site at 9, giving them time to meet the youth volunteers from REC , play some icebreaker games, have some breakfast, and help set up the workshop sites. REC has moved the festival to primarily be outside with only a few workshops happening at the REC office and several happening right on their own urban farm.
After the festival is set up, volunteers will have the chance to go to any workshop they are interested in. REC will need some amateur chefs to help run the grill for lunch and some artistic types to help face paint at the Kid’s Zone. This will also serve as lunch for everyone, volunteers and guests alike, with both vegetarian and meat options.
Volunteer roles at the festival will include setting up the different activities for the festival and making sure the streets are as clean as possible before and after the festival begins. One area will be the barbeque site and volunteers will help set up the grill and prep the food. One area will be a Kid’s Zone and volunteers can help set up the tent, put out fun games and art supplies, and decorate the area around the tent with sidewalk chalk. Other workshops will be led by guest and community gardeners and they may need some help setting up their area and whatever supplies their workshop requires. Workshops range from Backyard Chickening, a workshop on how to raise chickens in urban neighborhoods, to a Build Your Own Rainbarrel activity where participants will use recycled materials to build their own rain barrels for their homes and gardens.
Breakdown for the event will simply involve putting these things away and making sure that the community space where the event is held is as clean as when we found it. If people are especially excited to become involved in a particular role during the day like helping to DJ from our music tent, facepainting and playing games with kids, grilling, or one of the workshops, they can stay tied to that area, otherwise people can be involved in a number of roles as they are interested/get completed. Volunteers can use the set up time to decide what part of the festival they are most interested in helping out with during the afternoon.
The end result of the day will be a successful Spring Garden Festival where everyone involved learned about community gardening, met new friends, and had fun. We will end the day with some light clean up and a group debrief on how everyone’s experience was and how we can all stay connected in the future.
To register for this project, click here
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