Put your Spanish-language skills to work for our community as a SparkPoint San Francisco volunteer!

United Way needs Spanish-speaking volunteers to greet clients at our SparkPoint Center at Plaza Adelante in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Volunteers will help introduce clients to the wide variety of services available at SparkPoint, including:

• Free tax preparation
• Job training and career development
• Financial coaching • Accessing higher education
• Establishing and building savings

Volunteers can serve as their schedules permit, within the following dates and times:  January to April,  Monday – Friday, 1 to 8 p.m. or Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Learn more by contacting Stephan Pippen,  United Way’s Director of Volunteer Engagement, at  spippen@uwba.org or (415) 808-4345.

Help us spread the word by downloading and posting our SparkPoint Volunteer Flyer in your workplace.

Our “Meet the Women of the WLC” event last week at Barrique was a big success! More than 75 women turned out to network and get involved with United Way’s Women’s Leadership Council (WLC), which provides members with opportunities to make a meaningful difference in our community through advocacy, volunteering, networking, and professional development.

Many thanks to our generous sponsor, the law firm of Bryan Cave.

Click below to view a few photos from our event.

Want to learn more about United Way’s Women’s Leadership Council? Join us on February 29 (Leap Day) for the first session of our year-long speaker series, “Cultivating Women Leaders.”Hosted in partnership with the Bay Area Council, this first session will feature a panel of extraordinary women business leaders. What better day to “leap” into leadership than Leap Day!

You can also join our mailing list at www.uwba.org/wlc.

Yesterday, members of United Way’s Women’s Leadership Council (WLC) spent the afternoon wrapping books as holiday gifts to give to students at John Muir Elementary School, a community school supported by United Way. The WLC has chosen to partner with John Muir Elementary School as part of its efforts to improve educational opportunities for children from low-income families.

“Thanks to our generous Women’s Leadership Council members, all 27 fifth graders at John Muir Elementary School will be receiving a holiday care package containing two of their favorite books – one to read on their own and a second for their caregiver to read with them,” said Shani Ahearn, senior director, who is United Way’s lead for the Council. “In addition, our holiday drive inspired a group of amazing Girl Scouts to donate money from their cookie sales to purchase 10 books for the book drive. Incredible and completely inspiring!”

Click on the photo gallery below to see the merry WLC elves in action.

The holiday book drive, gift-wrapping party, and delivery of the books to students this week wraps up an eventful first year for the Women’s Leadership Council. The WLC launched in May, when more than 75 women leaders from a wide variety of backgrounds came together to create a women’s leadership group dedicated to United Way’s poverty-cutting goal.

The group offers members opportunities to make a meaningful difference through advocacy, volunteering, networking, and professional development. Current projects include a year-long lecture series about the need for more women in leadership roles and collaborating with United Way staff to refine our public-policy agenda, as well as the blossoming partnership with John Muir Elementary School. The Council has also organized a school-uniform drive, which will continue into the New Year.

Learn more at www.uwba.org/wlc and/or subscribe to the WLC mailing list.

Don’t let the do-gooder in you get stymied by a busy holiday schedule.  With MAKE IT BE micro-volunteering, you can help out a local charity in as little as 15 minutes!

Whether you’ve got some down time on the bus, a break during lunch, or just want something productive to do during TV commercials, United Way’s MAKE IT BE has got a micro-volunteering “challenge” for you.

MAKE IT BE provides a wide selection of small micro-volunteering tasks that are so easy they can be done from your computer or smart phone. You can use your professional skills such as sales, social media, teaching, design, brainstorming, and much more. Most importantly, you’ll be helping worthy causes that serve our community.

And, if we ALL put in a few minutes each week, that translates into the thousands of hours necessary to support United Way’s goal to cut Bay Area poverty in half by 2020.

Register at www.makeitbe.org/volunteer and complete your first micro-volunteering challenge!

MAKE IT BE is a United Way of the Bay Area campaign. We are a growing movement of Bay Area residents and organizations committed to cutting poverty in half by 2020 and building thriving communities.  Join us on Facebook.

Photo courtesy of Joshua Hinds via Creative Commons license.

This past Tuesday (Oct. 18) United Way, the Oakland Raiders and UPS teamed up for Hometown Huddle at Oakland’s Garfield Elementary School.

Oakland Raiders Rock Cartwright and De Marcus Van Dyke joined UPS volunteers to promote active and healthy living among Garfield students.

Rock and De Marcus lead the students in a series of fun exercises, games, and storytelling. At the close of the day, each student received a bag of healthy food to share with their families. As you’ll see in the photos below, the kids who attended the event had a wonderful time!

Thanks to our partners at East Bay Asian Youth Center, who were the perfect hosts.

This month, NFL teams across the country are working with their regional United Ways to drive home the importance of community involvement by participating in hands-on volunteer projects in their communities. For the last eight years, NFL players and their families have participated in a variety of activities, ranging from building playgrounds for toddlers, to conducting skill-building sessions for teens, to serving lunch to senior citizens.