Great week and weekend of volunteering, last week

Had a good time as judge at the children’s school district’s science fair this weekend. Last week, Thursday, volunteered with the point in time census of the homeless by walking the streets for three hours in the evening. A pleasant cold weather helped.

I learnt about both these opportunities by engaging with the high schooler’s activities.

At the science fair, the co-ordinator spoke about the long historical track record the school district has maintained since the first fair they held in 1984. They mentioned how the school district level fair does not act as a screening step to exclude participants from presenting in regional and other fairs but the volunteer judges act as coaches preparing the students in communication skills. As a result of this track record they mentioned how the school district’s national standing with colleges improved over time such that many of their graduates gain admission to top tier colleges.

I think science offers a very good field to develop communications as it is about communicating ideas based on data. The teacher in the room I was in with three other judges, mentioned how we were quite intense in grilling all the students in the 5 minutes we had for each of the eight presenters. After lunch the grand prize judging narrows the choices down to just one student. This is done by the lead judges who vouch for/ promote the winner from their room. We had a total of eight such rooms narrowing down the pool of eight nominees down to one.

The point in time census last week Thursday is an annual event conducted by the US government through local non profit agencies. I learnt about it from the church the children were volunteering at.

The kickoff and co-ordination of the volunteers for Dallas county was conducted at the United Methodist Church in downtown Dallas. At this kickoff event, I heard the results from last year’s count. Nationally, homelessness increased 10 percent. In Dallas it decreased by 30 percent. It was my first time volunteering and it was very inspiring to hear about the impact this participation from citizen volunteers has had for local government and non-profits – federal fund allocations that has led to major leaps but they reminded how the work is never done till there is no one who has a need for assistance and does not get it.

From my previous volunteering engagement with Family Gateway in Dallas, I saw how they provide various services to assist people to get back on their feet. I think this approach (assistance to enable folks to help themselves) is their key to sustainable results that is worth replicating every where.

This weekend was much more engaging with regard to volunteering as the high schooler who made a perfect score on the SAT had received free training as part of a cohort chosen by her school to participate in a beta deployment of a training offered by a non-profit SAT coaching funded by the founder of Khan academy had her opportunity to give back. She qualified to be a coach in the program and drew up her proposal for a boot camp after her application to be a volunteer coach was accepted.