Give Day
This past week we held our second Give Day of the year. We reached the highest participation point we have had since we starting doing Give Days three years ago. Throughout the day, we had over 130 employees volunteering at 12 non-profit organizations around the Tenderloin and Mid-Market neighborhoods of San Francisco.
The day started off bright and early, mostly early since the sun had yet to rise, at Episcopal Community Services Sanctuary Shelter and GLIDE Memorial’s soup kitchens. Between the two sites, we had 15 volunteers serving breakfast to our neighbors. About 700 people filtered through the doors to eat breakfast, it was quite the way to start the day serving all those meals!
Next, we moved to The ARC San Francisco and De Marillac Academy. Volunteers helped with Zumba and art classes at The ARC, working with developmentally impaired adults, as well as with their senior population a little later in the day. At the De Marillac Academy, volunteers were paired up 1:1 with middle school students who needed a little extra assistance in reading. Volunteers mentored and tutored to help get the kids back up to grade level. Meanwhile, we had groups move over to Curry Senior Center and Episcopal Community Services Senior center to serve lunch and facilitate a few rowdy rounds of Bingo!
Throughout the day, we also had our marketing and business development teams visit Asian Neighborhood Design in SOMA to help with their marketing and social media needs. Our design team went to Hamilton Family Center to help with painting and sign design projects, and a large group of hard workers spent their afternoon at Youth With a Mission’s Tenderloin Food Pantry, stuffing grocery bags for residents of the Tenderloin.
Towards the end of the school day, we had a group greet the kids who frequent the Boys and Girls Club Tenderloin Clubhouse, to help with homework followed by an afternoon of fun and games. We also helped a large group help kids get home safe by standing on the Tenderloin street corners lining the Safe Passage Route. Our Safe Passage app team stayed back at headquarters to add new features to the Yammer built Safe Passage app which was able to be released for use by the end of the day.
All in all it was a great day! We had a great group of volunteers out in the community building new relationships with our non-profit partners. We already have people who are ready to go back out and volunteer on a regular basis at the organizations they volunteered with.
