Youth volunteerism joins a global community as after-school students from Southwest Elementary prepare a community garden for Global Youth Service Day on Friday, April 23. Students are assisted by State Farm staff and AmeriCorps members from Harris County Department of Education’s Cooperative for After-School Enrichment.

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Jill Hinners, a MRC volunteer coordinator in Duluth, recently rolled up her sleeves to do some dirty work for the Skyline Parkway Clean-up. The event took place on April 23 as a part of Global Youth Service Day and she was kind enough to tell me more about it.

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Our members will organize and collect old and used computer hardware which requires special disposal it will be taken away by a special firm, and the leaflets made by our members will be placed in our school, they will be informed about the action. At 13.30 members will gather in front of the school and collect the street litter in the town center.Upon arrival to the school building, we are going to plant the tree in front of the school to remind the students and the town residents about the urgent need to protect the Earth and stop deforestation

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Students will clean school property and plant flowers. They will also collect paper around their neighborhoods to recycle. With the money they raise they will donate it to an orphanage.

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ACTIVITY:

To celebrate the 2010 GYSD the Kaduna YES Alumni decided to visit the Kaduna Prison to give talks to the inmates on HIV/AIDS, Drug abuse and cultism as well as to plant trees in the yard to fight desertification.
We applied for permission from the prisons authorities and just before we received approval letter there was a crisis in the prison as a result of an attemp to break the jail.
We were highly scrutinised by officials before we were finally granted permission to hold the program on saturday April 24.
The Alumni activity took place at the Borstal Training Institute where Juvenile deliquents and teenagers between the ages of 16-19 years were kept.
Program period was between 12-2:15pm. 70 youth inmates were in attendance together with the school Principal, school Doctor, program officer and a Teacher.
8 YES alumni and a Teacher were also in attendance. Earlier on we contributed towards the purchase of supplies such as soaps and antiseptics worth for the adult inmates at the main prison .
Supplies such as biscuits and soaps were also bought for the teenagers and presented to the school authority.
Trees were bought and planted within the Juvenile home.
Inmates were really happy to see Alumni of about their ages coming to talk and encourage them.They were surprised that Youths could be part of a large and big organisation such as the Peace and Development Initiative ( PDI ) and have free hand to participate in activities.
The inmates asked questions such as: How will drug abuse affect the future of a youth?, What are the dangers of drug abuse to the body? How can one protect himself from contracting AIDS?, How can one know that they have contacted HIV? How can fear and insecurity like is obtainable in Nigeria leads to Cultism? What is the Nigerian Government doing to address the menace and violence related to it and efforts to take good care of the Youths?

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Global Youth Service Day (GYSD) is celebrated during the third week of April every year with much fervor across the world to highlight the importance of the youth's involvement in community development. Keeping the youth service tradition alive, YES Alumni Islamabad commemorated GYSD for the second successive year this April.

The theme chosen for this GYSD was "Save the Margallas" for which the alumni decided to hold an interactive activity for the middle and high school students of Islamabad to make learning and giving back to the community more exciting. For this purpose, a hike was arranged to Daman-e-Koh in the picturesque Margalla Hills of Islamabad. Participants numbered a total of 55, which included students from four different schools: Headstart School, Liberal Arts High School, ASAS, and ICAS.

Participants hiked from the Marghazar Zoo up to Daman-e-Koh in around fort-five minutes. They were provided with sanitary gloves and garbage bags so that they could collect litter disposed of on the track along their way. Upon reaching Daman-e-Koh, the garbage bags were dumped in the garbage cans installed there, and the students rested for a while.

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Ecology education sessions and clean school campaign

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Improving city's environment, Cultural exchange

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Various activities for kids

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Cultural experience

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Multicultural family support center volunteer. April 12-25.

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we had 3 projects concerning GYSD :
first a group of 5 youth attended a youth exchange in Greece related to the environment dated from 17 till 24 April.
Second, in a Euromedeterian youth exchange there was a revival for a local remote town, with the help of Casper a guy from Litwanya.
Third,it happened that GYSD dates with the TUNISIAN HERITAGE NATIONAL DAY, so we organized a cerenomy day for a group of youth coming from a far place in the deserts to get introduced to the properties and heritage of living in the Tunisian deserts

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we had 3 projects concerning GYSD :
first a group of 5 youth attended a youth exchange in Greece related to the environment dated from 17 till 24 April.
Second, in a Euromedeterian youth exchange there was a revival for a local remote town, with the help of Casper a guy from Litwanya.
Third,it happened that GYSD dates with the TUNISIAN HERITAGE NATIONAL DAY, so we organized a cerenomy day for a group of youth coming from a far place in the deserts to get introduced to the properties and heritage of living in the Tunisian deserts.

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Stewart Park is my favorite place to hang out with my friends on sunny Sundays. Lately we noticed, that some of our favorite places are getting more and more polluted. Me and my friends decided to clean up some places at Stewart park, because clean environment benefits us and the whole community.

Helping the church with cleaning the garden after winter.

My name is Ismailova Aizada. I live in the city of Karakol. I study in 10th class of school number 6. Also I study English and Turkish languages; I am the volunteer in organizations «the Alliance on reproductive health» and in «House of journalist». And now I participate in the project “Tech Age Girls”.
As I have already told, that I live in the city of Karakol I very well know, that on our city beach there are the ecological problems. And one of problems is a trash. People from all Kyrgyzstan and even abroad come on Lake Issyk-Kul to have a rest. … But, having seen this trash, at many remains bad impression. And I wanted, that this problem has been solved, after all the lake Issyk-Kul is «the Pearl of Kyrgyzstan».

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Hello I am proud of me about yesterday!!!
I thought, planned a community service in my current school.I asked my friends to help me with cleaning up the school yard and library yard.
We teach and ask all students to separate the recycle from garbage. At home I think they do seperate but at school they don`t care. My chalenges were that i was afraid that nobody would listen to me, but turns out i did pretty cool. But next time WHEN I`m going to do the community servise i will start planning it sooner than i did this time.And think every detail of what i`m trying to do, also i learned that if i share with people around me and let them understand deeply how I feel and trying to make this place better place, then of course everybody woul want to help me and support me.
I hope i made little bit of a change,and this project definately will help me in future projects for my country!!!

Tattybubu Adysheva
Future Leader Exchange student(FLEX), Kyrgyztan
aquarius_girl2list.ru

Cleaning up a creek, the only nonprofit organization in the upper watershed that fights for your lakes, rivers and streams to clean up Mill Creek in Chino.
Volunteers will choose one of the following tasks depending on their physical abilities: In -creek trash removal, creek shore trash removal, trash sorting and inventory, or manning the orientation/refreshment stations. Due to the remote location and nature of the work, we need all volunteers to be older than 16 years. Individuals and groups welcome. A waiver of liability needs to be completed by all participants.

Today, the Chernobyl disaster does not generate the headlines it did when nuclear reactor no. 4 exploded on April 26, 1986, at 1:23 AM, with the winds blowing 70% of the radioactive debris and toxins into Belarus. However, the aftermath of this catastrophe continues to have devastating effects on the people of the Chernobyl region, especially the children. Spawned by the conscience and concerns of people throughout the U.S., scores of grass root programs have emerged to help the people most affected by the Chernobyl explosion.

In 1997, representatives from across the United States gathered to explore the formation of a national organization to help coordinate and sustain these community programs. At the end of the conference, the seeds for a new organization were sown to assist the people of the Chernobyl region.

Throughout the next year, a working group continued to develop the structure and define the role of the organization and in October 1998, Children of Chernobyl U.S. Alliance (CofCUSA) was officially formed. Working through an alliance of the many community organizations, individuals and programs (as well as various corporations, businesses, and foundations) directly involved in these humanitarian efforts, CofCUSA is a private, non-profit organization with tax-exempt status.

CofCUSA is supportive of all ongoing efforts and provides support services to both new and existing groups; has established a network of resources; and is committed to developing new program initiatives to meet the needs of those in the Chernobyl region.

The primary focus of the community groups has been that of providing health recuperation respites for the children of Chernobyl. However, other groups engaged in significant program activities provide:

humanitarian aid and medicines to orphanages, community centers, and hospitals;

assistance for those with special medical needs, e.g., visually impaired, prosthetics, and seriously ill;

We set up recycling bins at Relay for Life & set up trash cans beside them. The Relay For Life lasts from 5pm to 5 am. At midnight, we start picking up & sorting recycleables & throwing away trash. We then take recycleables to recycling center. Last year we collected 22 large trash bags of recycleables and in 2010 we collected 25!

We had three groups of 5 foreign exchange students and 1 adult per group act as Super Scoopers during the Battle of Flowers Parade event in San Anotnio, Texas, April 23, 2010. We collected horse manure in cans to be donated as compost for the city of San Antonio.
We also sponsored a carriage with 8 foreign exchange students and 1 adult dressed in native dress to promote "The Melting Pot of Cultures" showing diversity in our communities.

Fort Drum Ny had their post wide 2010 Earth Day Clean up Challenge.
School Age Center put together a team of caring children to participate in the 2010 Earth Day Clean up Challenge. The children searched for trash and recyclable items and in just under two hours the children collected 91.5 pounds of trash and recyclable material. Way to go team.

The schoolkids and their parents were engaged in planting flowers and plants both outdoors and indoors at the school. Next to enhancing the community areas with more greenery, the project aimed to refresh the paint at the playgrounds and build new sport facilities there.

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In order to raise awareness among the schoolchildren about the environment-friendly way of collecting used plastic bottles, the school developed a week-long recycle-art project. Pupils were asked to collect and smash the bottles and prepare art pieces from the material to beautify the community space in the court of the school.

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The school wants to encourage children to take responsibility for their environment. As part of the local GYSD initiative, the schoolchildren went to clean up the sites around the school where they want to prepare a safe and tidy location for playing outdoor sports (ie. skateboarding, volleyball etc.) in the near future.

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In March 2009 Nasli Navras (New Generation)started a project called New Wave. The project goal was to educate young generation of Dushanbe, Tajikistan about basics of civil society and community service. The first stage of the project was training 10 trainers (university students). As part of their training the students designed and implemented 4 social projects for GYSD 2009.

Since October 2009 the project recruited 50 high school students who were broken into 5 teams. Under the guidance of their trainers the students learned about civil society, social problems, project design and management. The children learned to notice promlems in their local communities and to step forward to solve them.

GYSD 2010 is a final exam for the 50 volunteers of New Wave club. For this date each team designed and implemented a social project of their own. Here is their description:

Team Javonon 1 - making a game day and bringing books and toys to Dushanbe orphanage for children 0-4.
Team Feniks - cleaning the territory and painting a dining hall for Hissar House for the blind.
Team Navrason - leading a training on Healthy lifestyle and community service for students of 6-7 grades.
Team Javonon 2 - painting a gazeebo at the Romit House for the Old.
Team Leader - making a poster with photographs showing garbaged areas in their communities and calling to the local dwellers to stop literring.

The value of all these projects is that they were designed and implemented by children themselves with only a little help and coordination from their trainers. We all hope that GYSD 2010 is to become the first step New Wave volunteers have made to become better citizens!

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A few students at school number one have designed two community service projects to celebrate Global Youth Service Day. To celebrate Earth Day, on April 22nd they picked up trash around the school and made the school grounds look cleaner than I have ever seend. Second, they are helping a elderly lady, who lives by herself, with her spring cleaning and gardening work. On April 27th they will also cook for her and bake her a cake, which they hope will make her very happy. The idea of volunteerism in Turkmenistan is not widely understood, and in preparation for Global Youth Service Day, this small group of students discussed volunteerism with their English teacher, a Peace Corps Volunteer. The Peace Corps Volunteer has posted some photos on her blog from the service project, and she hopes that this small practice in volunteerism will inspire these students to serve in their community in the future.

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To promote and bring awareness to recycling in the community. To help people get started with recycling.

Teens from the Philadelphia area will spend the day clearing invasive vines, planting trees and wildflowers, building stairs, digging a pond, and removing trash from the Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Education Center. After doing hands on work, there will be reflection workshops including drama, sketching, poetry, composting and journal making.