What is Make A Difference Day and how do I get involved in VCCV activities?

Make A Difference Day is the most encompassing volunteer month, a month of helping others, and a celebration of neighbors helping neighbors. Created by USA WEEKEND Magazine, Make A Difference Day is an annual event that takes place on the fourth Saturday of every October. This year it will be celebrated on October 25.

For Make A Difference Day 2014 millions of volunteers will unite to improve the lives of others in their communities. Whether you want to help a local organization or organize a project of your own, you will improve the life of someone else.

To celebrate this day of service, the Volunteer Center of Cedar Valley will assist volunteers, from one person to a group of volunteers, in finding opportunities to get involved in service projects. This is a great way for students, businesses and employees, or even families to give back to the community through service!

The Volunteer Center of Cedar Valley works with 131 nonprofits that offer over 180 volunteer opportunities. Visit www.vccv.org to learn about these opportunities.

For more information regarding Make A Difference Day opportunities, call (319) 272-2087, visit www.vccv.org, or email.

Photo montage of youth programs

Youth Volunteers

The Importance of Youth Engagement: Preschool – College

Preschool and Service

Parents with young children are increasingly making volunteering a regular part of their routine, whether it's delivering meals to the homebound, planting flowers at a local park, or spending time with people with disabilities. For busy parents who want to spend time with their kids while still contributing to their community, volunteering as a family is an ideal activity.

The benefits are enormous. Volunteering teaches toddlers and preschoolers about compassion, empathy, tolerance, gratitude, and community responsibility. And children who volunteer are more likely to continue doing so as adults.

Many volunteer jobs are perfect for families with little ones. First, decide whether you're interested in a onetime project (collecting children's books and donating them to a hospital, for instance) or a longer-term commitment, such as serving dinner at the Catholic Worker House.

An easy way to find out about the many volunteer opportunities in the community is to contact the Volunteer Center of Cedar Valley and describe your interests and the ages of your children. The Center will be able to match you with an appropriate volunteer project.

Once you've decided on a project, explain to your children exactly what to expect. Be enthusiastic about what you're doing and explain why the job is important ("When we pick up litter from the park, we make it more fun for everyone to come and play here"). Answer your child's questions about the work and the people you'll be interacting with.

Above all, have fun! Consider teaming up with another family, inviting one of your child's friends to help out, or stopping for a picnic in the park or ice cream on the way home. What initially may seem like another task on your to-do list can become a wonderful bonding experience for your family.

Youth and Volunteering

Are you a young person who's thinking about volunteering? There are many good reasons to get involved in volunteer and service-learning opportunities. Here's a few to consider:

Volunteering can help you to explore your interests

Volunteering can be an opportunity to learn more about something you enjoy doing. If you like working with other kids, get involved at Exceptional Persons, Inc. or help younger students with their schoolwork. If you like to cook, make dinner at the Catholic Worker House or help out at the Salvation Army. Or, if you enjoy sports, play games with the kids at the Boys and Girls Club. Look for opportunities that allow you really explore areas that already interest you. 

Meet people you might not ordinarily meet

By volunteering in a group, you'll meet other people with the same interests you have. If your grandparents live far away and you don't get to see them often, you can become friends with an older adult and adopt them as your "grandma" or "grandpa”. By volunteering with the Committee for Refugees and Immigrants that helps newcomers to the Cedar Valley, you can meet people who have come here from other countries. You'll learn about their culture and help them adapt to life here.

Volunteer activities add value to college applications and work resumes

College admission staffs want to know who you are as a person. They're looking for well-rounded individuals who will give their best both within and outside the classroom. Potential employers want to know if you show up on time, can take direction, are responsible, and work well with others. A good reference from an agency you've volunteered with can help them decide that you'd be a good employee.

It's fun

People who volunteer often say that they get more out of the experience than they give. Giving of your time and energy makes you feel good about yourself and raises your self-esteem. Working with other volunteers builds friendships.

You're sharing your talents and knowledge with others

You have skills, talents, knowledge, experience, personality and passion. Each of us is unique and has something to share with others.

You're advancing the common good

You can help make a positive change in the world through service. Each of us wants to live in a community where families are healthy and strong, where children are given the help they need to succeed in school, where people with disabilities and the elderly are able to live as independently as possible, and where people live in safe, supportive neighborhoods.

By volunteering, you help make your community a better place to live, and you become part of the solution.

College Engagement

It’s no secret that students are in college to learn new skills and to gain experience for their future careers. What if something additional could add to those experiences and up the ante on student’s resumes? Or help them find their interests? Here are the top five reasons why students should engage in volunteerism during college:

1) Meet New People
Volunteering brings all walks of life together and no matter your personality, interests, or background, you're bound to connect with another like yourself through service. You don’t really know who may meet, or what sort of impact they could have on your life, and this brings possibly one of the most exciting aspects to volunteering.

2) Make a Difference In The Community
Volunteering is an extremely rewarding experience. And something so easy to do… find the Volunteer Center of Cedar Valley through on-campus resources.

3) Develop Needed Job Skills
Volunteering is one of the best ways to gain hands on experience for future careers. Service opportunities not only provide the opportunities to network with others, but are a great addition to your resume. Volunteerism your chance to gain essential leadership experience that all employers want to see.

4) Enhance Your Education
Sometimes the most valuable lessons are taught out of the classroom. Applying hands-on experience is going to be some of the most valuable assets to your degree, so it's important to get involved early to optimize these opportunities. It's important to show that you are able to achieve a good work-life balance because it paints a better picture of the real you.

5) Explore Other Areas of Interest
Volunteering is a great way to delve into a unique career path or new hobbies you may never had seen yourself taking. Things like weatherizing a home with Green Iowa AmeriCorps or spending a few hours a week at a Country View could result in new interests or passions you didn't know were there.


To secure volunteer opportunities contact the Volunteer Center of Cedar Valley at (319) 272-2087 or information@vccv.org. Volunteer opportunities may also be accessed at www.vccv.org.

Service Learning and Featured Agencies

Service-Learning is a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities.

Through service-learning, offered by the Volunteer Center of Cedar Valley, young people—from preschoolers to college students—use what they learn in the classroom to solve real-life problems. They not only learn the practical applications of their studies, they become actively contributing citizens and community members through the service they perform.

Service-learning can be applied in a wide variety of settings, including schools, universities, and community-based and faith-based organizations. It can involve a group of students, a classroom or an entire school. Students build character and become active participants as they work with others in their school and community to create service projects in areas such as education, public safety, and the environment.

Community members, students, and educators everywhere are discovering that service-learning offers all its participants a chance to take part in the active education of youth while simultaneously addressing the concerns, needs, and hopes of communities.

Jean Seeland, Program Coordinator at the Volunteer Center of Cedar Valley is of the opinion that people of any age may use service-learning well.  At the pre-school level, there is not a lot of choice allowed as to types of projects, however, the enthusiasm for doing any kind of service-learning more than makes up for consensus building. The high school level is also a great age for effective service-learning. In addition, family service projects develop a nice presence for family involvement while building a passion for service within the family unit. Jean’s favorite group is probably the 4-5^th grade level. This age combines the enthusiasm and the creativity of all of the levels and usually come up with some innovative projects. For example, last year, 4^th graders wrote a play about bullying and another group put together a toy drive.

The agencies Jean works with most often include the Northeast Iowa Food Bank and the Salvation Army. Both of these community agencies have been utilized because they can more easily accommodate large groups of youth of varying ages to do service projects. Both of these agencies have been utilized in a variety of ways. For example the Salvation Army has been a place to donate” health kits” for homeless people and the after-school program has participated in the VCCV’s literacy event for Global Youth Service Day and a literacy project done by Hoover a few years ago. Youth also rang bells for the Salvation Army for their Joy Maker Day of Service project last December. Service-learning students have also utilized the Northeast Iowa Food Bank in a variety of ways—by collecting food, stacking shelves, and bagging cat and dog food from the Cedar Bend Humane Society that the Food Bank includes in their food boxes for elderly who have pets.

These are just a few of the many organizations the Volunteer Center of Cedar Valley utilizes when planning and participating in service-learning projects. To learn more about service-learning, contact Jean Seeland. 

What is Service-Learning?

According to the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse, Service-Learning is a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities.

Through service-learning, young people—from kindergarteners to college students—use what they learn in the classroom to solve real-life problems. They not only learn the practical applications of their studies, they become actively contributing citizens and community members through the service they perform.

Service-learning can be applied in a wide variety of settings, including schools, universities, and community-based and faith-based organizations. It can involve a group of students, a classroom or an entire school. Students build character and become active participants as they work with others in their school and community to create service projects in areas such as education, public safety, and the environment.

Community members, students, and educators everywhere are discovering that service-learning offers all its participants a chance to take part in the active education of youth while simultaneously addressing the concerns, needs, and hopes of communities.

What Are the Benefits of Service-Learning to Students, Schools, and Communities?

Students Gain:

•  21st century skills: critical-thinking, problem-solving, leadership, decision-making, collaboration, and communication
•  Real-world experience connected to academic subjects.
•  Greater sense of the purpose for learning.
•  Deeper understanding of themselves and empathy and respect for others.
•  Opportunities to explore skills and interests and to network for career readiness.
•  Guided practice in taking action as socially responsible global citizens.
•  Increased self-efficacy as they address community needs.

Schools Gain:

• Deeper connection between academic knowledge and real-world applications.
• Increased pro-social behavior and student engagement.
• An effective drop-out prevention strategy.
• A focus for school improvement.
• Improved school climate.
• Positive school-community relationships.

Communities Gain:

• Energy and creativity of youth in addressing community needs.
• Opportunities to build positive relationships between community members and schools.
• New perspectives on youth as assets, not liabilities.
• New generation of caring and experienced citizens, activists and volunteers - tomorrow's civic leaders.
• Increased public awareness of key issues.