Digital Arts Service Corps - recruitment

Winter Update

Davina Fournier — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:53:35 +0000

Most of my day is spent working on projects to boost our numbers of students and mentors (i.e. recruitment.) Now that it’s getting near the holidays, this has slowed down. When I first started here, it felt like I had a least one or two events a week I attended in order to round up more students or volunteers. Thankfully, those days have ended. We actually have an organization in my town whose purpose is to coordinate after-school youth programs. They were a great help to me when I first started because they compiled a list of a number of different events where youth could be reached (community events, back-to-school, nights, etc.) Unfortunately, they don’t have enough funding to continue everything they have been doing this summer but hopefully they will be able to find it somewhere.

I’m glad that recruitment has slowed down because it gives me time to plan for next year. Also, as a side project, I’ve been working on a portion of our website. I wanted to create a list of all the different programs we have along with tutorials and example projects. Many of our mentors come in knowing Office but not much beyond that (myself included when I started as a mentor.) Therefore, we’re trying to beef up our training for them so that they feel more comfortable when kids ask “How do I make a game?” or “How can I create this in Fireworks?” Rather than looking like a deer in the headlights, we’d like them to feel comfortable saying “Well, let’s start here.” The site is certainly still a work in progress but if you want to check it out, you can find it here. I’d be glad to have any feedback, tutorials, or additional free programs you might suggest. Also, if you work with kids and are looking for anything (Nathan, you were asking me about this at one point), then you may want to check out some of the free programs available. My favorite is GIMP since it does much the same as Photoshop but has a much better price tag (free!) but Alice is also a pretty unusual program when it decides to work correctly.

P.S. Why is it so cold in Virginia? I wish it were April...

New CTC VISTA Project Flyer

danielle martin — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 19:20:35 +0000

Here's an updated copy of our CTC VISTA Project flyer. It's handy if people ask you how to get or become a CTC VISTA. Paul made it but I've been updating it - It's spurning me to want to learn more about Adobe InDesign. I also enjoy Paul's treatment of old VISTA organizing clipart...

(Hopefully) Useful info about recruiting volunteers

Laura Hanley — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 23:20:29 +0000

Good afternoon, all!

So....even though volunteer recruitment has nothing to do with what I will be doing during my VISTA term, I'd still like to blog about it because it's something I'm really interested in overall. During my first VISTA term (yup, this is year two of AmeriCorps for me), I found this to be quite useful since volunteer recruitment and management was one of my tasks. The information comes from the following website where you can find lots more information on volunteering: http://www.drcharity.com/voluntee.html

15 Places to Recruit Volunteers

1. Corporate newsletters

2. Schools and colleges

3. Retiree programs

4. Senior citizen centers

5. Corporate outplacement programs

6. Corporate volunteer programs

7. Churches, synagogues, and other places of worship

8. Internship programs

9. Career counseling services

10. Civic clubs, fraternal societies, sororities

11. Newspapers, radio, cable television

12. Governmental organizations

13. Court system

14. Volunteer recruitment fairs

15. Other nonprofit organizations

I have plenty of more information on volunteers that I will share in the future, but here's at least somewhere to start! In case you're wondering where I got this information, I received a whole binder of information at my first PSO for my last VISTA position. Who knows, maybe this whole binder will be up by the end of this year since I felt that the contents were helpful in getting me through my last year!

Hope everyone's doing well!

In service,

Laura