Hello, once again! This is Brian reporting from Volunteer Kalamazoo, where I am serving as a dual Volunteer Centers of Michigan (VCM) and LEAGUE Michigan VISTA with the Michigan Nonprofit Association (MNA).

It has been a wild and crazy (but fun) month here at Volunteer Kalamazoo. The past month has seen four major programs through completion, beginning on March 27th with our annual fundraiser, Eat, Drink, Give and ending on April 22nd with our annual volunteer recognition and award ceremony, STAR (Sharing Time And Resources) Awards. While I did lend a hand at both of these events, it was actually the two service days sandwiched in between that took most of my focus.

As many of you reading this know, Global Youth Service Day (GYSD) was on April 18th (I encourage those of you who are not familiar with GYSD to check out gysd.org to learn more about this world-wide day of service). I am happy to report that GYSD was a success and would like to recognize Volunteer Kalamazoo’s Youth Service Council on their hard work in making the day a hit.

The other major event was Spring Into The Streets (SITS), which I was actually given complete ownership of. This program is done every year in collaboration with Western Michigan University’s Office of Student Activities and Leadership Programs. This year SITS happened on April 10th. My role in SITS was to set up sites for students to register to volunteer and to manage the event on Volunteer Kalamazoo’s site.  In all, I was able to set up over 530 volunteer slots with about a dozen organizations throughout the Kalamazoo area – which proved to be more than enough.

Hi, I’m Brian Church and I am serving with Volunteer Kalamazoo in (you guessed it!) Kalamazoo. I have the special privilege of working through two Michigan Nonprofit Association (MNA) programs: The LEAGUE Michigan (TLM) and Volunteer Centers of Michigan (VCM). While the work I do with both of the programs may differ some, they both come together in promoting service in Kalamazoo. My role with TLM is to create a culture of service in local schools by promoting service learning in the classroom. However, unlike most TLM VISTAs who operate from a school in their county, I operate from Volunteer Kalamazoo.  My work with VCM has overlap, but also brings in many new components to my work. In addition to working with Volunteer Kalamazoo’s Youth Service Council (a youth advisory committee), I also work to promote days of service (both national and local), assist with grant writing, and a lot of other programming that the organization is involved in, especially if it involves youth.

I believe being placed in a volunteer center as a TLM VISTA has been beneficial to my service. It has allowed me to gain a broader understanding of service learning and service enterprise, which I can then apply to my service in the schools.