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2010 Herb Wurstner Award Application
The United Way of Seneca County implements a variety of initiatives and partners with several community agencies/organizations to ensure that our youth have positive opportunities to grow and become healthy adults. We use data and proven results to help in our strategic planning for creating these opportunities. One of our main resources is Search Institute a leading global innovator in discovering what children and adolescents need to become caring, healthy, and responsible adults. Drawing on extensive research, Search Institute brings hopeful solutions to pressing challenges in the lives of young people and their communities.
Search Institute developed 40 assets that are common sense, positive experiences and qualities that help influence choices young people make and help them become caring, responsible adults. The assets are categorized into eight types of assets including support, empowerment, boundaries and expectations, constructive use of time, commitment to learning, positive values, social competencies and positive identity. For more information about Search Institute’s 40 developmental assets, click here.
We promote the 40 developmental assets through our youth programs including the Seneca County Youth Council and Surge After School Program.
Focus Asset for this month: Youth Programs- young person spends 3 or more hours a week in sports, clubs or organizations at school and/or in community organizations.
Act Now! Scouts and other youth groups are great places for young people to build strong, supportive relationships. Explore youth group opportunities. Suggest that your kids join a local organization for the summer as a counselor or mentor for children.
We are committed to helping our youth reach their full potential in the journey from school readiness, success during school, and ultimately strengthen their capacity to become productive citizens. Through initiatives like Alternative Spring Break (ASB) we are able to teach our youth the importance of giving back by helping a community in serious need. This year will be the third year of ASB, and this time we are pleased to announce the event will be held in Seneca County.
Alternative Spring Break is an United Way of America initiative based on a vision that if we could provide opportunities for our students to help where help was needed most, they could see themselves as part of something bigger. To help fulfill this vision, in the past we partnered with the National Relief Network (NRN), an organization solely dedicated to helping people and communities recover from tragic natural disasters. In 2010, we will be partnered with the following agencies and businesses to keep this event local:
- Ace Automatics, Inc.
- Cayuga Lake State Park
- Disney, Inc.
- New York Chiropractic College
- Seneca County Habitat for Humanity
- Seneca County Partners for Children, Youth and Families Youth Development Committee
- Seneca County Workforce Development
- Seneca County Youth Bureau
- Seneca Falls Savings Bank
- Youth Service America
ASB 2010
This local experience consisted of youth helping clean up Cayuga Lake State Park by fixing and painting picnic tables, removing invasive plants, and picking up debris on campgrounds. The youth also participated in a car wash to raise funds for Habitat for Humanity. ASB took place April 23 & 24 during Global Youth Service Day. During the event, youth stayed overnight at the Chiropractic College where fun and new friendships were formed.
ASB 2009
After participating in ASB in 2008, the Surge After School Program was committed to funding another ASB. We took 35 students to Eustis, Florida where students cleaned homes that were mold infested as a result of a Tropical Storm. In one home students remodeled two rooms by tiling and putting up new dry wall. They also painted the exterior of two homes, and even repaired some termite damage.
You can read more about this trip from a student’s perspective by reading our Summer Newsletter from 2009
ASB 2008
In 2008, our grant funded Surge After School Program paid for 65 high school students to travel to Macon County, Tennessee a small rural area that had been hit the hardest by an F4 tornado. Upon arriving there we learned that the tornado had traveled in a line directly through the County, spanning a mile wide in diameter. The results were overwhelming for this community; their crops were destroyed, their homes and barns were blown away, and some of their family member’s lives were taken. Our students worked very hard that week, and they were a true inspiration to many people in Macon County.
One family member from a work site was so touched by our student’s work that he made sure to thank them all before we ended our trip. Below is just a part of his heart-felt thank you.
“We really appreciate this. This is not just coming from me, but all of Macon County, because we had a real bad storm and lost a lot of people. Kids like you all makes us get through it a whole lot better, a whole lot easier…You all did a wonderful job. You all are a great bunch of kids. I’ve never seen kids your age as well mannered as you all are and as big a heart as you all got…I thank God to have wonderful kids like you all.”
Check out pictures from Alternative Spring Break ’08 and Alternative Spring Break '09
