PressFriends is a community service group formed and run by kids, for kids. Their mission is to make writing fun for elementary school kids, to empower every kid to become a leader and mentor, and to create friendships among youth from diverse backgrounds. They work with elementary school students in higher-need areas by helping them develop their own school newspaper, hold workshops on news writing, and work with kids on producing local TV programs covering community issues. They use VolunteerSpot to schedule volunteers and track their volunteer hours.
Today, our VolunteerSpotlight shines on Deborah Southwell, Parent Advisor to her local PressFriends group.
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Please tell us about your organization and your volunteer needs.
PressFriends was started by middle school students in 2008 to help higher-need elementary schools start and run elementary school newspapers. Our motto is, "Making friends while making writing fun," and that's what happens at the mentoring sessions! The elementary school kids can write on whatever topics interest them - school news, sports, books, movies, science, technology, history, restaurants, health care, food (recipes), and we always have room for cartoons, poetry, and even an advice column. In the 2009-10 school year, PressFriends mentored 150 elementary school children and reached over 3000 students with elementary school newspapers. PressFriends has no employees and is run entirely by volunteer student mentors and parent volunteers who oversee the mentoring and provide teacher training.
How did you get started as a volunteer leader?
I started volunteering for activities involving my children, which led to more and more involvement in both their schools and our community. When my children and their friends started an elementary school newspaper, I was the parent advisor, so when they started PressFriends to share the elementary school newspaper concept with kids who could really benefit, I became the parent advisor to PressFriends.
What’s one piece of advice you have for volunteers or their leaders out there?
Make sure you utilize all avenues of support for your organization. If you are a small organization, you might look for an umbrella organization to help you start out. PressFriends was accepted by Community Partners as a project; Community Partners acts as a incubator for non-profit groups in Southern California. This gives us 501(c)(3) status and enables us to provide our student volunteers with community service hours and apply for grants. Community Partners provides us with administrative support, grant writing critiques, accounting and reporting services, and many other services that we find to be invaluable.
We also partner with school districts, principals, teachers, our local library district, and after school programs, as well as utilizing the resources of our local elected officials. We've gotten publicity from our local newspapers and support from local organizations and businesses. We also found that local service groups are an excellent source of high school volunteers.
Why did you decide to use VolunteerSpot?
With our growing number of volunteers, we found that VolunteerSpot allows all volunteers to have an equal shot at volunteer opportunities. Volunteers know that sign-ups are truly on a first-come, first-serve basis when they signup online at VolunteerSpot.
We looked at many volunteer management services, and VolunteerSpot was the easiest for us and our volunteers to use. In addition, VolunteerSpot makes it easy to keep track of events and volunteer hours. PressFriends is a certifying organization for the President's Volunteer Service Awards, and it's important for us to track our volunteers' service hours so we can reward and recognize those who have put in a large number of service hours.
Anything else you’d like our readers to know?
We think that it is important for a non-profit organization that utilizes volunteers to be run without preference or bias in order to encourage volunteers to serve the community now and in the future. VolunteerSpot is an excellent vehicle for making the selection of volunteers fair and transparent.
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We salute Debora and all the other volunteer leaders out there who mentor and support children in their communities. If you're interested in learning more about or supporting the good work of PressFriends, please click HERE.
If you're using VolunteerSpot, write and tell us about what you're doing and give us a chance to shine our Volunteer Spotlight on you!! Just email us at [email protected]
