Fired UP! Project Inspire 2012

Instead of an annual holiday party, nearly 1,000 NVIDIA employees participated in 2 days of physical service at Veggielution for Project Inspire 2012.

Project Inspire made me a believer.

By nature, I consider myself a critical person, some might say even cynical, but for the first time in my life I became a part of a project that transformed me into a complete believer. I had the privilege of being a part of the prep team for NVIDIA’s 11th Annual Project Inspire at Veggielution at Emma Prush Park. In just six days I was amazed, inspired, and motivated by the generosity and selflessness of the people with whom I served. I saw NVIDIA executives dig in the dirt and over 1,000 volunteers put in countless hours to expand Veggielution, a community farm in East San Jose, from 2 to 6 acres. It was simply amazing.

As a first year corps member whose responsibility is mostly school related, tetherball was my primary physical

Jess explaining what needs to be done on the farm stand to her team of NVIDIA employees.

undertaking until this point. I was a co-project coordinator, along with an amazing NVIDIA employee named Will Reamy. During Project Inspire we were responsible for the construction of an entire farm stand, which will be used to sell produce grown at Veggielution to the community. Needless to say, I was in over my head.

I like to think that I rose to the occasion, gathering construction materials and tools, and understanding building plans designed for engineers (sort of). I struggled, I stressed, I sweat, I got slivers, and I grew in so many amazing ways. While my own growth was rewarding, the opportunity to watch more than a thousand people give up their time to build up a farm that would benefit the community was truly amazing. NVIDIA as a company truly impressed me with their charity and commitment to the cause. Even though Project Inspire ended on Saturday I know for a fact that the NVIDIA employees working on my project along with Will, their fearless leader, were back Sunday, all day to finish the farm stand. Their commitment to service was inspiring.

Now that Project Inspire  is over I can look back and laugh at how tired I was and how silly I must have looked trying to construct picnic tables with very little skill. The support and motivation I was surrounded by far surpassed the awkwardness of the unknown I faced during prep-week and the event. I wish I could go back and do it all again.

- Jess McCue, Corps Member CYSJ

Wordless Wednesday: NVIDIA’s Project Inspire

On Friday and Saturday, corps members and staff from our site joined 1,500 NVIDIA employees and Care Force to help transform Full Circle Farm in Sunnyvale.  Check out the video and photos below to see our impact.

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Slideshow photo credits: Natalie Bograd and Vanessa Palafox, Corps Members CYSJ

Video is property of NVIDIA

Thankful Thursday: Corporate Executive Board

Each week, City Year San Jose/Silicon Valley will thank a person or organization for inspiring us in our service. This week, Recruitment Project Leader and Social Media Manager Megan Baker would like to thank the Corporate Executive Board for having us be a part of their global service day.

Principal Karling Aguilera-Fort thanks the CEB volunteers as Charlie Knuth from CEB looks on.

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to be a part of a really amazing service event at Leonard Flynn Elementary School in San Francisco with the Corporate Executive Board (CEB).

What was really cool about the day wasn’t just painting the murals and building benches, it was knowing that I was a part of a day where people were serving around the world. CEB also partnered with City Year Chicago, City Year DC and City Year London on that day.  I also heard that there were service events in Singapore and other parts of the world.

All of the volunteers were super energetic and were great problem solvers. They put a lot of heart into what they were doing and really invited the City Year folks to whole-heartedly be a part of their day.

It’s always really special to see organizations giving back to their community, and to be something that was so large scale was really incredible.

It was a bittersweet day for me personally because it marked the last physical service event I will do as a corps member with City Year San Jose/Silicon Valley.  It was hard to not feel sad as we did our final break and packed up the vans.

Thank you to CEB for making my last physical service day City City Year  San Jose/Silicon Valley a memorable one. It was a pleasure serving with you.

To see pictures of the event, check out our Flickr.

Megan Baker, Recruitment Project Leader & Social Media Manager CYSJ

Reliving the transformation of GYSD

Dan Maurath is a corps member serving on the Bank of America Team at A.J. Dorsa Elementary School.

At the end of service days past, I found myself visually amnesiac. I could not remember how the school campus or park had once looked. The site had been so transformed that my memory was also transformed. The faded faint lines faded in my memory, replaced by the bright colorful paint of the blacktop and murals.

Transform was our theme for Global Youth Service Day 2011. So on April 16 at Majestic Way Elementary, I sought to capture the transformation of the day. I made a visual record of the transformation. I recorded the initial outlook of the school and the progression of it into the vibrant campus it’s become. I made two separate time-lapses, one of which is included below, and a short documentary entitled GYSD 11.

The time-lapses were shot at 10-minute intervals throughout the lifespan of the projects. I sourced much of the documentary from volunteers and other corps members who became amateur filmmakers for the day, documenting the progress of their projects and the transformation through their eyes. All 11 perspectives were edited together to produce a single cohesive record of all that transformed.

I invite you as a reader to witness the change giving a morning can produce and as a volunteer to see the transformation you helped create.

Dan Maurath, Corps Member CYSJ

Idealist’s Week

Idealism: It’s one of those divisive words that motivate some of us, and makes others want to roll their eyes and sigh heavily. What do these naysayers have against idealism? They say it’s a lofty concept appropriate only for dreamers and people with their heads in the clouds.

City Year seeks to change that perception. In fact, City Year’s definition of idealism calls explicitly for real action. For City Year corps members, Idealism is another word for a process. This process has four achievable, cyclical actions that every corps member is expected to understand and master.

This upcoming week, CY SJ/SV is hosting special all-day programming themed around the four actions of idealism. The week, in true City Year fashion, has been planned completely by corps members and guided by senior corps members.

1.Imagine – The first action of idealism is to look at the way things are now, and imagine a better reality. Corps members do this by imagining the achievement gap closing, imagining their favorite students going to college, or imagining starting their own non-profit. Corps member Amanda Liles has put an artistic twist on the day, challenging corps members to express their imaginations with paint, video, and other forms of art.

2.Recruit – The second action is to recruit. In order to make your imagined reality come to life, you need to get the right people invested to make the right things happen. Corps members Alex Mihalek, Celina Chun, and Nancy Adjei have organized the production of recruitment videos to mobilize new incoming corps members. Each school team had the chance to produce their own school showcase video, highlighting what they love about their school.

3.Transform – The third action is to replace, through planning and hard work, the existing reality with the imagined reality. You need to actually make your dreams come true! This could be teaching a child to read who previously could not, planting a community garden in a vacant lot, or turning a drop-out factory to a high-performing institution. Corps members Dan Maurath and Anya Bergman are working closely with our Civic Engagement Team to help plan the culture pieces of Global Youth Service Day. The team has planned a special panel mural project for our youngest volunteers. They’re also engaging volunteers creatively by producing a crowd-sourced documentary using FlipCams.

4.Inspire – The last action of idealism feeds into the others. In order to mobilize change, you need to inspire people. The vision must be inspiring. The people, and numbers of people, must be inspiring. The transformation must be inspiring. This is how your movement grows and how the “ideal” becomes real. Special guest Tom Broussard, Associate Dean of Admissions and Career Services at the Heller School for Social Policy at Brandeis University, will be joining us to provide the corps with some much-needed inspiration for achieving their future goals and mobilizing people for change. Tom is a long-time friend of City Year and AmeriCorps and will be providing his services free-of-charge to our corps – learn more about him at tombroussard.com.

This is going to be a great week! Thanks to Megan Baker and Liz June for guiding the committee through this week and special thanks to Kim Brown, our staff point and mama bear extraordinaire for all your help in putting this together! Hopefully this is the first year of a beautiful annual legacy project for corps to come.

Krista Corwin, Training and LACY Project Leader CYSJ

Thankful Thursday: PTA at Majestic Way Elementary School

Each week, City Year San Jose/Silicon Valley will thank a person or organization for inspiring us in our service. This week, we would like to thank the PTA at Majestic Way Elementary School for all of their hard work in helping us make Global Youth Service Day (GYSD) a success.

Global Youth Service Day (GYSD) is literally the largest service event in the world. Since 1988, GYSD has been a celebration of service that mobilizes millions of young people around the world in service.

PTA members stayed late into the night to help us trace monarchs (the school's mascot) at the entrance of the school.

This year, City Year San Jose/Silicon Valley will be serving at Majestic Way Elementary School with about 300 volunteers. Together we will paint murals, brighten up the blacktop, build an outdoor classroom and benches and more.

And it wouldn’t have been possible without the support of the PTA.

From day one, the PTA has been super energetic and excited about bringing City Year onto its campus for a day of service. (It didn’t hurt that their new principal was the former principal of the school where we celebrated GYSD last year).

Here is a rundown of just some of the amazing things the PTA did to support our service at their school:

• Held a cookie dough sale fundraiser that ended up covering the costs of the majority of our supplies
• Reached out to the local community to not only volunteer, but to donate to the project
• Helped us identify what projects the school could benefit from
• Organized sponsorship of picnic tables
• Helped us with the prep work (and stayed at the school until 10 o’clock at night so that we could get lots of work done)

The PTA has been so grateful to us as we gear up for this huge day of service. So before that day comes, we want to recognize all of their hard work and thank them for everything that they did to make this day bigger than we could have imagined.

Not only will Majestic Way get a makeover, but the spirit of volunteerism in the community will really have the opportunity to shine.

Thank you to the Majestic Way community for making this all happen. It’s truly going to be an awesome day of service.

* Be sure to follow @CityYearSanJose for updates on the service day as it happens on Saturday, April 16th.

Megan Baker, Recruitment Project Leader & Social Media Manager CYSJ

Living MLK’s dream through service

Being a first year Corps Member, this was my first MLK service day with City Year. I have been looking forward to this particular service day since I first started serving.

The elementary school we served at was re-named after their beloved principal Daniel Lairon who had passed away midway through the 2009-2010 school year. I was excited to be able to give something back to this school and community where students, parents, teachers and the present principal could come back to school Tuesday and see what the hard work of dedicated volunteers could do for their school.

That morning I drove up to the school with Dr. King’s words in my head, thinking about what my own dream was.

My dream is precisely what I am doing today. I have the wonderful opportunity to serve everyday and be a role model to children.

Dr. King was adamant about spreading powerful words of change in our world. When I came to serve in San Jose, I came in with this idea that by the end of the year I was going to have every student walk away with a sense of pride and self-confidence. I was honored to be able to paint murals that had inspirational quotes from Dr. King, Cesar Chavez, and their late principal Daniel Lairon. These words that will be displayed all around the campus will hopefully inspire the students of Daniel Lairon Elementary to pursue their dreams.

After the murals were complete, I moved outside to help re-vamp the blacktop. Corps Members and volunteers gathered with brightly colored paint and stormed the four square courts with paintbrushes in hand. By the time we were done, the school had large brightly colored squares for students to play on as well as a fresh map of the world painted on their blacktop.

Every time the students walk through their hallways or into their cafeteria and see brightly colored murals with quotations from passionate people that all shared a similar dream, these students will know that someday they can accomplish whatever they believe in.

At City Year, we all have a common dream. That dream is to see great achievement in the students and communities we serve. I left MLK Day wishing that I could do it all over again the next day.

I too have a dream; my dream is that one day all children will be given equal opportunities no matter their background or where they come from. My dream is to see children succeed and have them believe that they too can achieve greatness in life.

Katherine Grundt, Corps Member CYSJ

Photos and video footage by Romel Antoine, Team Leader CYSJ

Video Montage by Megan Baker, Recruitment Project Leader & Social Media Manager CYSJ

What Does MLK Day Mean to You?

We asked our Corps Members, Staff, and Alumni what #MLKDay means to them.

This is what they had to say…

Honoring MLK through service

“Everybody can be great because anybody can serve.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

This statement is a philosophy that City Year has adopted all over the country. In honor of the legacy of MLK, City Year chooses to make MLK Day “a day ON, not a day off.”

On the 25th anniversary of this national holiday, City Year San Jose/Silicon Valley will serve at Daniel Lairon Elementary School in the Franklin-McKinley School District.

The school was recently renamed in honor of Daniel Lairon, who served as principal of this school for 15 years. He passed away midway through the 2009-2010 school year.

It is a school that serves more than 550 students with a goal to prepare all children to be global learners.

City Year San Jose/Silicon Valley will engage more than 60 external volunteers in service including City Year alums, friends and family, and employees of Bank of America, Starbucks and Reading Partners. Together, we will complete some really incredible projects which include:

• Rennovating the school garden
• Painting panel murals to be hung around the entire campus
• Cleaning and organizing classrooms and storage spaces
• Painting the blacktop

Want to see the service as it happens? Be sure to follow @CityYearSanJose on Twitter for live updates. To see more photos and coverage from the service day at City Year sites across the country, visit the official City Year Blog Events page.

If you are serving with City Year, be sure to share your service! All you have to do is:

• Email: cityyear@posterous.com
• Attach: photos, video, media files
• Subject: This will be the title of your post
• Body: This will be the text of your post – include your name, role in event, location

All posts will be reviewed and must follow our guidelines in order to be published.

Megan Baker, Recruitment Project Leader & Social Media Manager CYSJ

Serving with excellence

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, everyday this week a City Year San José/Silicon Valley staff or Corps Member will share how the words and actions of Martin Luther King, Jr. has impacted their life. Today, Staff Member Stephanie Kim discusses how physical service fits into City Year’s service model and how it relates to a quotation said by Dr. King.

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

–Martin Luther King, Jr.

Attendance. Behavior. Course Performance.

The overall objective of City Year’s core program, Whole School, Whole Child is to improve these proven early warning indicators of students dropping out of school.

But where does physical service fit in to City Year’s laser-like focus on education?

Senior Corps Member Liz June paints the USC logo with student volunteers and a parent at Lee Mathson Middle School. The service day was sponsored by Team Sponsor Applied Materials.

This seemingly innocent question began to keep me up at night as I agonized over finding the answer to how physical service fits in with City Year’s education focus. After mulling over the question for longer than I’d like to admit, I realized that physical service directly relates to City Year’s efforts to keep students in school and on track to graduate from high school on time.

The Whole School, Whole Child Program focuses on improving the ABC’s of the high school dropout crisis: Attendance, Behavior and Course Performance.

City Year intervenes by providing three integrated service elements proven to positively affect the ABC’s: academic support, a positive school climate and after-school programming.

Physical service enables us to create a positive school climate in high-need schools. We renovate schools, paint murals, plant gardens, create play spaces and refurbish community centers; we transform schools and communities. Through physical service, we breathe life back into drab school campuses and create a positive school climate conducive to learning and achievement.

At my first City Year service day, we painted 32 college logos on Lee Mathson Middle School’s volleyball and basketball courts. Students came bounding onto the blacktop exclaiming, “I’m going to go there!” as they pointed to different logos. The excitement and determination in the students’ reactions made it evident that we are creating a college going culture for students who grow up thinking that college is not a realistic option for them.

Through physical service, we are showing our students that college is a reality for them, moreover an expectation.

Regardless of if we are tutoring in a classroom or building planter boxes, the students are the reason we serve. If I can contribute to beautifying a school campus and getting kids excited to go to school by mulching all day, I will undertake that job with painstaking excellence, for our students.

Thousands of volunteers will join City Year’s 1,750 corps members and staff at 20 City Year sites across the nation to serve their communities on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. At City Year, Dr. King’s birthday is a “day ON, not a day off.”

Join us on Monday, January 17^th, 2011 as we create a positive school climate at Daniel Lairon Elementary School to honor the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his dream of the “beloved community.”

Stephanie Kim, Development Associate CYSJ