Be My Volunteer

This year, there is no reason to dread the approach of February 14th. Why? Well, as this post from the Case Foundation Blog highlights, there is much more to this hallmark holiday. Besides celebrating your loved ones with chocolate and roses, share your love with your community!

This coming week, forget the carnations and heart candy. Instead, celebrate love by sharing with you neighbors, the local community, and the city at large. There are plenty of ways to do good- here are just a few of my favorites from Elaine Gast, but with a Met Council touch:

1) Will you be my...volunteer?
Donate your time to one of the many volunteer programs Met Council has to offer. Whether it is cooking and serving up hot, kosher meals at Masbia, calling home-bound seniors, or leading a career services workshop- we've got plenty of opportunities to match you up with!

2) Send love letters
Not just to your sweetheart, but to people and organizations such as UJA Federation or AmeriCorps that are doing things for the world. Tell them why you respect and appreciate their work, and that they really make a difference. If you're feeling extra romantic, include a donation.

3) Reach out to those in need
Deliver homemade cards or kosher treats to one of our many low-income housing sites for seniors or mothers.

4) Clean your closets
Get a head start on spring cleaning and donate items such as: gently used business attire, non-perishable kosher food items, or toiletries. Organizing you own drive is the most effective way for schools or groups to demonstrate they care.

5) Celebrate with Small Acts of Kindness
As it just so happens, Feb 12th to the 18th is the 13th Annual Random Acts of Kindness Week. Buy coffee, lunch, or a toll for the person behind you in line. Tape the exact change for a soda to a vending machine. Visit their site for hundreds of ideas more.

If you are interested in any of our opportunities, contact the volunteer department via volunteer@metcouncil.org or 212-453-9619. Check out our full site for more information and ideas!

New Year You!

This year, we are delighted to introduce a new volunteer program which is essentially a wellness resolution program to help clients set goals, provide classes and guides to help them attain them, as well as monitoring and tracking their progress with checkpoints.

In an effort to collaborate with the students in the Nutrition program at Hunter College, our AmeriCorps Volunteer Coordinator Simone Carvalho created this unique service experience. The students from Hunter Colleges' Nutrition program are also eligible to receive fieldwork experience in addition to volunteering. This service encourages the students to experience the human side of becoming a nutritionist by gaining hands-on experience attending to clients, not only learning just the fundamentals of a healthy diet.

'New Year You' will start as a weekly pilot program for the first three (3) months at our housing sites in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn. Our existing volunteers that are interested, as well as the Hunter College Nutrition students will monitor, take rate and retention of clients. The weekly workshops will include nutrition lessons, a fitness class, nutrition bingo and a monthly check-in to track the clients progress.

We are looking forward to the launch of this program, in early February. If you would like more information on how you can participate or volunteer in already existing programs contact us via email at volunteer@metcouncil.org or call 212.453.9508..

Innovation in Volunteering Programming: The Networking Workshop

Networking is the process of building mutually beneficial relationships that provide knowledge, advice, information and further contacts, all of which help focus and advance career goals. Recently, networking has proven to be more valuable than ever. In fact, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently found that 70 percent of jobs are secured through networking. Especially since the economic downturn, finding jobs has become increasingly difficult. A Fiscal Policy Institute Report states that “Among unemployed New Yorkers, half have been without a job for more than six months, and 29 percent have been jobless for more than a year.” The recent increase in unemployment has naturally led to a rise in competition among individuals. Networking provides an edge: it allows individuals to be more than just words on their resumes. But like cooking, driving, or any other skill, networking requires proper guidance and practice.

Recognizing the significance of job readiness, Met Council provides professional help to low to moderate-income New Yorkers who want to find jobs or advance their careers. These resources are available for clients who come from various backgrounds and economic situations including unemployment, underemployment, or career change. Met Council’s innovative Career Services Center has volunteers who help people build the necessary foundation for job searches, as well as provides the extra advantage to help its clients secure employment. After teaching computer skills, providing resume assistance, and leading a mock interview workshop, these skilled volunteers conduct a Professional Networking Workshop. This training and hands-on approach provides job seekers with skills on how to network and get information on potential employers. By play-acting in a networking mixer, clients have the opportunity to present their professional selves in a non-threatening environment. This interactive technique is particularly useful in teaching clients how to connect with possible future employers. As part of the training, for example, clients learn to create a two-minute pitch and a 30-second pitch― or, “the elevator pitch”― to clearly articulate who they are and what their goals are. Clients are also taught how to connect with their interviewers on a deeper level, and how to follow-up after the interview.

These valuable skills are not innate, which is why this program is so helpful to clients. But each client’s experience at Met Council’s networking workshop would be incomplete without a chance to receive feedback on his or her performance. After learning networking tips and then implementing these tips in a simulated environment, these clients are then offered thoughtful suggestions on how to improve their already-enhanced skills. These feedback sessions pave the way for clients to reach their ultimate potential, as it gives them an opportunity to grow. In the process, many valuable ideas are generated and then shared within a group setting, allowing each client to learn from his or her peers. By addressing each client’s personal needs, the volunteers are able to tailor the most successful networking approach, unique to each client. Met Council recognizes that no two clients have an identical resumes, so they should not be subjected to identical training. Instead, each client receives individualized guidance and one-on-one attention.

If you are interested in volunteering for our networking workshop please e-mail Volunteer@metcouncil.org

Some information was taken from: http://www.fiscalpolicy.org/FPI_StateOfWorkingNewYork2011_Part1_20110831.pdf

Written By Carly Scheinberg, Met Council Intern

Pack It Up For Purim!

As Jewish New Yorkers prepare to celebrate Purim, UJA-Federation is teaming up with AmeriCorps and the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty to help defeat hunger in our community. Join us for Pack It Up for Purim, a community-wide effort to create 2,000 food packages for needy New Yorkers, and become part of the Purim tradition of mishloach manot, offering a food package to a neighbor.

Want to learn more about this holiday and our Pack It Up for Purim program?

Watch the video below!

Pack it up for Purim from UJA-Federation of New York on Vimeo.

* Volunteers — Make a nutritious nonperishable food package. Visit our volunteer section for drop-off centers and helpful tools.

* Community Agencies — Visit our agency section to register to recruit volunteers and serve as a drop-off center.

* Talk to us on Facebook and Twitter (@ujafedny), with hashtag #pack4purim

* Read about our Pack It Up for Purim initiative.

* Donate now — Your generosity will provide a safety net for the impoverished in New York and around the world.

Volunteer with Children

It's a New Year: why not make your 2012 resolution to be more active and make a difference? And we can't think of a better way to impact our future than to help a child learn and grow! These two exciting programs give volunteers meaningful and rewarding experiences with at-risk children. Help change a child's life by becoming a mentor or a tutor today.

Volunteer Mentors Needed

Jamaica, Queens

Sundays, 12:30PM-3:00PM

YEP is an educational program that aims to engage and instruct homeless children through mentorship activities. Volunteer duties include setting up the room, facilitating that day’s activity, working one-on-one with children, and establishing meaningful and lasting relationships with mentees. For more information, please contact Kelley Baldwin at 212-453-9675 or kbaldwin@metcouncil.org.

Volunteer Tutors Needed

Borough Park, Brooklyn

Tuesdays and Wednesday, 6PM-7:30PM

**Female volunteers only**

Homework Helpers seeks to improve the academic performance of children, grades four to eight, who come from single parent households affected by domestic violence. Volunteers are paired one on one with clients to help teach and explain homework assignments and subjects. For more information, please contact Irijah Stennett at istennett@metcouncil.org.

Congratulations to our Volunteer of the Month!

To start off the New Year we’d like to acknowledge May Lai as our Volunteer of the Month! May has been an integral part of our Senior Fitness Program in Brooklyn and her dedication and enthusiasm have brought so much to the program.

May has been living in New York City for three decades, having previously attended high school in Hong Kong and lived in the Dominican Republic. It was her good friend that sent her the link about Met Council’s volunteer opportunities. For almost a year now, she has be the volunteer leader for the Senior Fitness Class at the Carlton Residences in Fort Green. Every Monday morning, for one hour, Mai leads a fitness class for low-income seniors living in this Met Council housing site.

For seniors, staying active is linked directly to staying healthy. May volunteers because she believes that many community projects need the extra help. The most rewarding part, May states, is “self fulfillment and meeting new people. I feel great helping the community!”

We are happy to have her energy and enthusiasm being used in this capacity to keep our seniors active, healthy and most importantly engaged in regular exercise that they enjoy. May, we thank you for your time, patience and commitment to the community as well as its seniors. We are extremely grateful for your dedication!

Game on, Day on! - Martin Luther King Junior Day of Service

Martin Luther King Junior Day: “A day on, not a day off.” And what a day on it was! Yesterday, for Met Council’s MLK Day of Service, almost two hundred volunteers distributed twenty thousand brochures across New York City in order to raise awareness about the food benefit programs available to New Yorkers in need and to debunk some of the common misconceptions and stigmas related to them.

Volunteers gathered together at 80 Maiden Lane in the morning to learn about the details on SNAP food benefits and poverty that they would need to communicate to business owners and people on the street as they distributed materials. They learned about the most common misconceptions about the food program. Many people, for example, think that they are not eligible if they own a car, or are immigrants. Upon reflection after the event, one volunteer remarked that he was surprised at all of the assumptions that people made around the program and glad that he was able to become more informed so that he could talk to them and clear up confusion.

After the learning portion, volunteers then went out to all parts of the city and distributed the information. The information distributed had immediate impact. People on the streets as well as business owners quickly began to view the materials and ask questions to volunteers about the program. And guess what? Less than 24 hours later, we are already receiving dozens of phone calls from people around New York City who saw the flyers and wanted to apply! Good job, volunteers!

Do you want to see our volunteers in action? Click here for pictures of the day’s events.

What did YOU do on MLK Day?