VolunTEEN Nation
Date: 14-05-2014
Author: Simone Bernstein
Source: VoluntTEEN Nation
Teenagers Changing Our World
VolunTEEN Nation is a USA based, all youth-led, all volunteer organization that activates youths to volunteer with their national volunteer database and international grant opportunities for service learning.
Passionate activists for promoting public health and service learning, college students Simone and Jake Bernstein, as co-founders and full time volunteers and their younger sister Sophie, took the initiative to create a national youth volunteer platform that organize national youth-led sports clinics for youth on the autism spectrum. They created an organization that also now provides intergenerational technology workshops for senior citizens led by teens, free after-school music lesson programs and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) service learning workshops in urban schools. They also coordinate and oversee community and school vegetable garden donations to local food banks at www.volunTEENnation.org
Over the past five years 54,000 young people found volunteer opportunities through these sports clinics, music programs, organized volunteer events, the website database and the international ambassador program. VolunTEEN Nation promotes a culture of service, providing the vision and resources to strengthen communities through youth volunteerism, utilizing the power of social media. Simone and her siblings, frustrated with their own search for youth volunteer opportunities, first created in 2009, a regional website and volunteer platform to help youth easily connect with local volunteer opportunities. Utilizing social media tools to promote and recruit for their volunteer event, they organized park clean-ups, sports clinics for youth on the autism spectrum and school supply drives. Requests from youth and schools throughout the country and national non-profits inspired Simone to take the organization national.
VolunTEENnation.org empowers youth to problem-solve challenges in their community. When Simone, Jake and Sophie Bernstein realized there were limited recreational athletic opportunities for youth on the autism spectrum, they recruited their peers and organized free sports clinics to provide one on one basketball, tennis and soccer skills training for young people that had few and limited opportunities to participate in sports. The success of the regional free clinics inspired them to offer grants for youth throughout the nation to organize youth volunteers and host sports clinics in their communities. To date over 15,000 youths have participated in these national free sports clinics. Their own grandparents frustration with technology sparked their desire to create and offer intergenerational 'Teens and Tech' workshops where youths provide one on one instruction to senior citizens on texting, skyping and using digital cameras and e-books. VolunTEENnation.org's free music lessons program led by youth volunteers was launched when the St. Louis City Schools cut funding for music lessons. When Jake volunteered in Ecuador over the summer, Simone realized that youth studying abroad could promote and foster a culture of service learning in developing countries. Simone offers youth traveling abroad, grants to grow vegetable gardens, offer sports clinics and provides educational supplies for tutoring programs. After visiting the local food bank and seeing the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables available, Simone contacted local community gardens and collected donated produce and provided grants to local pre-schools to grow and donate crops to local community food banks. As a military dependent, Simone saw the limited reading materials available on military base libraries for youth. They organized a national book drive to provide an abundance of literary options for military dependents.
Utilizing the power of social media to effectively reach out, recruit and appeal to youth, volunTEENnation.org activates youth to get involved and make a difference in the world.
For more information about Simone, Jake and Sophie Bernstein and their amazing VolunTEEN Nation, visit www.volunteennation.org
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Date: 14-05-2014
Author: Simone Bernstein
Source: VoluntTEEN Nation
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