United Way CEO Anne Wilson joined San Francisco 49er Josh Morgan on ABC-7′s View from the Bay to offer tips about raising children who care about their community.

View the video.

United Way needs your help to promote LIVE UNITED Sports Packages. A portion of ticket sales benefits our Road to Recovery campaign. Between now and September 23, here are three easy ways to promote it in your workplace:

1. LIVE UNITED ticket packages make great prizes for campaign fundraising events and raffles. Buy tickets now at mainsite.uwba.org/news. If you are interested in purchasing group tickets, contact your United Way development officer.
2. Distribute flyers and postcards. Download the flyer to hang in break rooms and other employee gathering places. Your United Way development officer can also provide printed postcards for distribution.
3. Internal communications. Please consider including this short article in your employee newsletter or on your company intranet:

Have fun and support a great cause! Purchase LIVE UNITED Sports Packages and save up to 25% on tickets for Bay Area sports teams. A portion of ticket sales benefits United Way’s Road to Recovery, which is helping Bay Area families hardest hit by the economic crisis. mainsite.uwba.org/news.

United Way and the SF 49ers installed a play structure at Belle Haven during the 2008 Hometown Huddle

Ten-year-old Julio threw frequent temper tantrums and refused to do his work when he was first referred to the Family Support Center at Belle Haven Community School.   Belle Haven is one of several Bay Area “community schools” supported by United Way.

The “community school” model brings support services – such as health services, counseling, mentoring, after-school activities, and parenting programs – directly onto school campuses in low-income neighborhoods, enabling teachers to focus on academics, while the community provides added support that students and their families need.

Although there is a lengthy waiting-list for mental health services in the school district’s counseling program, Belle Haven’s Family Support Coordinator Maria Magallanes was able to immediately assist Julio. Maria facilitated family therapy sessions to address a history of domestic violence and enabled Julio to address these issues through individual play and talk therapy.

Working with Julio’s teachers, Maria taught him a system in which he could use cards to communicate with his teacher when he was frustrated or needed a break during class, rather than having an outburst. Eventually, there was no need for the cards because Julio began to communicate verbally when he was frustrated or needed a break. The teacher began to see a change in his behavior, and Julio’s mother saw a dramatic decrease in his temper tantrums.

The Belle Haven Community School has yielded significant results for other students: higher academic achievement, improved relationships with peers and teachers, and reduced violence.   Parents are more involved in the school, and the program connects families with resources needed to remain healthy, stable, and engaged in their children’s education.

When seven year-olds at Belle Haven Elementary in San Mateo County dreamt up their perfect new playground, they had no idea that San Francisco 49ers and hundreds of other corporate volunteers would help make their dream into a reality.

During United Way’s 18th annual Week of Caring, volunteers, including San Francisco 49er wide receivers Josh Morgan, Jason Hill and Dominique Zeigler, rolled up their sleeves and finished installing the new equipment that the school’s second graders had hand selected. “Things like this, I didn’t have growing up. I didn’t have a playground to play on,” Jason Morgan said. “All we had was concrete and the streets. So, giving kids an opportunity to do something better with their lives – that’s always important to me.”

The Week of Caring project capped off an effort to improve academic performance that involved parents, teachers, administrators, other nonprofits and students to attack the root causes of the school’s lagging test scores.

“This new approach has paid off,” said Lorne Needle, VP, Community Impact at United Way. “We are seeing results with test scores and reading scores showing a marked improvement. In many ways this playground was a reward for all of the hard work.”

This year, Week of Caring provided more than 200 Bay Area nonprofits with access to 7,000 corporate volunteers. Many of the nonprofits have been United Way partners for years. Thanks to the volunteers, nonprofits crossed hundreds of critical projects off their ever- growing to-do lists.

Week of Caring is a partnership with the Volunteer Centers of the Bay Area. With generous support from Chevron Corporation, now in their ninth year of sponsorship, it has grown to be the largest corporate volunteer events in the country. This year we partnered with Hands On Bay Area’s Be the Change Day which allowed us to extend even further into the community.