This year-long program offers high school students the opportunity for personal growth while learning about opportunities to serve their community. Accepted teens serve as ambassadors for the College Bound Advising Working Toward Change initiative while developing leadership skills in volunteer service and community organizing. Ambassadors take part in a training program that covers topics such as community organizing, leadership, fundraising, and public speaking. Through group and individual projects, students gain an understanding of the impact that volunteer efforts have on one’s community and personal growth.
WTC Ambassadors for the 2022-2023 term are expected to:
• Attend the Student Orientation in September (date/time TBD)
• Attend bi-weekly group meetings (September- June) (times TBD)
• Organize and lead ongoing volunteer efforts throughout the academic year 2022- 2023
• Attend a monthly (September – June) volunteer event
• Help with fundraising
Our mission is to encourage and provide opportunities for school students to engage easily in social service activities to expand their learning, making a larger contribution through small acts of kindness, community service projects, and fundraising efforts to help support our local community and initiatives worldwide
Our vision is to enable high school students to participate in volunteer opportunities that they are passionate about and to inspire students to create projects of their own, to engage more easily in community service activities while enhancing their learning, and gaining an appreciation for the importance of helping others in the community.
“During the Covid lockdown of 2020, my daughter and a few of my students started looking for community service opportunities. They were struggling with not only adjusting to the pandemic, but more so because they felt stifled by the idea that their small gestures really wouldn’t change the world at a time when everything felt insurmountable.
Back then, every Friday night, my family was assembling bags of sandwiches and snacks for a homeless shelter, and I was reading the book Impact.
On one of our family sandwich-making nights, my son turned to me and said, “this is great, but we are only making 50 bags a week; how is that helping?” I gave him the book to read.
The next week we discussed how small deeds, even making someone smile, can make an impact on someone’s life, and more so on the giver’s life as well.
So Small Deeds Matter was launched, and after several reiterations of the name, the student group decided on Working Towards Change. It is now grown into a full-fledged student-led volunteer corp.”
~Eydie Balsam, College Bound Advising Founder
