STREET BLOG: OUR STAFF SHARES THEIR STORIES

Did you know that it's National Volunteer Week? We personally think it should be a whole month, at least!

A new report about volunteering says that volunteerism went down slightly in 2006, after reaching all time highs after September 11, 2001.


According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

An increase in volunteerism from 20.4 percent in 1989 to 26.7 percent in 2006 was heavily influenced by a sharp increase, almost doubling, in the volunteer rates of young people ages 16-19, according to the report, released at the start of National Volunteer Week.

That's certainly true at Streetside. Of the approximately 100 volunteers who help us every year, most (but not all) are college students. And this spring, we launched a new paid internship program. The program offers opportunities for high school students from the communities we serve to give back, get work experience, and earn a little cash, too! It's great having their perspective, and their help.

Hooray for volunteers!

[Streetside Stories]
[volunteerism]
[volunteers]
[interns]

Labels: interns, Streetside Stories, volunteerism, volunteers

Streetside's Tech Tales program was featured on today's Daily Candy blog! Thanks, Daily Candy!

Daily Candy
Tech Tales
Streetside Stories

Labels: Daily Candy, Streetside Stories, Tech Tales

Most of the writing students do in our programs is in story form. But a few years ago, when we were developing our Streetside After School program, we surveyed youth and found that they really wanted to write poetry after school. So we added a unit on poetry focused on self and identity to our new program.

A few years later, the youth we work with have written hundreds of really cool poems.

Here's one recent one, by Timmy Yu of Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in San Francisco.

Like Me

I am from life,
from the honor of honor.
I am from the place, as strange as yet to be
like the wind and the breeze.
I am from the autumn,
still many from dawn.
I am from the herd
From the red and the blue,
A piston in birth

Please, I am from me.
From the brain mechanic,
From dare of truth.
I am from

I am from a place like me.

poetry
Streetside Stories
afterschool programs

Labels: afterschool programs, poetry, Streetside Stories

Today we found out the sad news--Cody's Books in San Francisco will be closing. This follows on the heels of the closing of their famous Berkeley store.

Streetside had planned to hold our annual reading from the Streetside Anthology at Cody's this year. The staff there was so helpful and welcoming.

We began working with Cody's this year because the bookstore we'd been partnering with, A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books, went out of business in 2006.

Stay tuned for more news about our reading, and buy a book at an independent bookstore today!

Cody's Books
Independent Bookstores
Streetside Stories

Labels: Cody's Books, Independent Bookstores, Streetside Stories