How Volunteers and Mentors Can Use KidsCampaigns
No matter what your age, whether you're 60 or 16, volunteering or mentoring
is a powerful way to work in your community on behalf of children. In fact,
the Presidents' Summit for America's Future kicks off a nationwide commitment
to action on behalf of the nation's young people. Some adults want to tutor
an individual child or mentor a teenager; others want to work with a
children's group to change the way a community supports children and
families. "I thought when I began I would change a life, and I found that
it changed my life," is the anthem of organizations like One to One, Points
of Light, and Youth Service America that promote mentoring and other
volunteer opportunities.
KidsCampaigns has proudly launched its
commitment to the Presidents' Summit with a wealth of information to help
volunteers meet the challenges for volunteering on behalf of kids.
KidsCampaigns can introduce you to successful community programs and
volunteers across the country. Here you will find comprehensive information
on the goals of the Summit--mentoring, providing safe places and structured
activity, fostering marketable skills through effective education, ensuring
a healthy start, and using opportunities to give back through community
service. Use KidsCampaigns to get connected to local programs through our
volunteer
want ads and several
national volunteer clearinghouses.
|
Get
started—and keep going—by using the KidsCampaigns' online primer (it's
also offered in traditional book form) called "101 Things You Can Do for Our Children's
Future," by Richard Louv. The guide suggests ways to recruit and train parents, grandparents,
and non-parents to be volunteers, mobilize churches and business to get involved, provide
support to other parents, and much more.
|
|
|
Get smart: The U.S.
Census Bureau, other federal agencies, and nonprofit organizations can supply you with the data
and documents you need. For example, check out the Newsroom, which gives you the latest
news related to health, education, safety and economic security. Packaged Kidstats has reports,
like KIDS COUNT, a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, that track the status of children
in the United States, with national and state-by-state measures of the educational, social,
economic, and physical well-being of children.
|
|
|
Get connected:
Find out what people and organizations around the country are doing to improve
the lives of kids—and how you can help.
|
|
|
Use this feature to find the information and contacts you're looking for, from lists of
organizations working on behalf of kids, to information on education, substance abuse, and other
issues, to advice from groups involved in fostering mentoring, to links with organizations
offering volunteer opportunities, like Servenet.
|
|
|
Sign our Guestbook, fill out our survey—and most important, give KidsCampaigns and its
readers your feedback. Let us know what you're doing in your community, workplace, church,
service group, or school to work on behalf of kids.
|
|
|
An outlined guide to KidsCampaigns—from organizations working on behalf of kids in
your state to information about the Coalition for America's
Children, which consists of 350 local, state, and national organizations.
|
|