Thursday, December 31, 2009

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from StandUp For Kids - Worcester!

We're really excited to start 2010. Why? We have new goals for the new year!

Our Program Goals
  1. Recruit and retain volunteers. We already have a great group of volunteers but we could always use more volunteers in all areas of the program. We also want to make sure we keep all our great volunteers, so we'll be looking at better ways to communite with and appreciate our team (p.s. You guys and gals are the best!).
  2. Build community awareness of our program and youth homelessness. We kicked it up a notch in 2009 with two great awareness events: 24 Hours on the Street and Come Draw with Us. We'll hold both of these events in 2010 plus we'll add some more events to the line up (e.g., a rumored Talent Show). We'll also be contacting schools and local organizations to educate them on our services. And we're going to start mailing our quarterly newsletter to local organizations!
  3. Initiate Preventative Programs within the community. We've been doing a lot of street outreach to the at risk and homeless kids in our community. Now it's time to take a look at ways to prevent these kids from ending up on the streets. We plan to promote the Don't Runaway Program to local youth interested in helping the program. We will also be looking at starting a Backpack Outreach program (more details to come). Of course, we would love to have a few new volunteers to help out with this effort (Hint. Hint.).
  4. Maintain and expand our Outreach Center. We're currently looking at new ways to get the word out about our outreach center to youth. We may also look at expanding the times or days, which of course would mean more volunteers (see Goal 1... You know you want to join our program).
  5. Expand Street Outreach. We just added one more day a week of street outreach to our schedule. Now we'll be looking at new locations to add on to our current locations of outreach. Our street outreach counselors are amazing! Keep up the good work, guys!
  6. Develop our funds through fundraising, marketing, and grants. We're ending the year with some great donations from the UMass Memorial Nursing Leadership Team and DePierro Productions. In 2010, we'll continue to apply for grants and market to the local community. Plus, we hope to host our very first fundraising event!

That's six major goals for 2010! After looking at 2009's Program Goals (e.g., Open an Outreach Center, Improve our community resource documents), we're pretty sure we can accomplish all of these.

Thank you to our wonderful team of volunteers for a successful 2009 and to our supporters for helping make it a success! And welcome to 2010!

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