National Service Days

We're excited to remind you that we have a few national service days that you need to participate in during your VISTA year! These are fun days for you to get involved and perform some direct service.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day:

The state will be organizing an MLK Day project in January, and we encourage all of you to get involved. I believe it will be a hygiene item drive, and when we have specific details, we will pass them along to you. You are also welcome to do another project for that day or week, and please let me know what your plans are.

AmeriCorps Week:

Another service week during the year will be AmeriCorps Week in May. We will send you more details on our project’s activities in a few months.

Make a Difference Day:

This is coming up on October 23. This is not a required service day for you to participate in, but I wanted to let you know what the Utah County VISTAs are planning for that day. The VISTAs here are planning a Halloween Carnival for the Nebo Legacy Mentoring Program, and it will be held on Friday, October 22 from 5:30-7 pm at Taylor Elementary School in Payson. We will have different booths with games and activities, and the mentoring program will provide pizza. The students who are mentored are in 4^th and 5^th grades and are at-risk youth. This will be a great opportunity for our VISTA members to enjoy some direct service and spend time with the youth. We cannot cover the mileage for our VISTA members outside of the Utah County area to attend, but everyone is invited to participate. If you would like to participate, please let me know!

Welcome!

We'd also like to welcome our newest VISTA members to the Volunteer Empowerment Project. They are:

Deborah
Joseph
Sonali
Malinda
Molly


Thanks for dedicating a year of your life to serve! We're excited to have you work with us.

Thank you and Farewell!

We've had many changes on our VISTA project this past month. We'd like to say thank you and farewell to all of our great VISTAs who finished their terms of service.

Thank you to our wonderful summer associate VISTAs:
Matthew
Samantha
Lee
Jeremy
Sonali
Heather
Kayla

We appreciate all of your great work this summer! We'd also like to thank our full-time VISTA members who completed one year of service to the community:
Rachel
Kristin
Allen
Alyson
Stephanie M.
Stephanie I.





Please keep volunteering with us! We'd also like to give a special thank-you to Kristin, who updated this blog for us this past year. Thanks for keeping us informed and united!

Good luck to all of our former VISTA members!

Vote in the Photo/Video

Take a second to vote for your fellow Americorps members' entries!

Click here to see the finalist photos and videos!

Happy 4th of July!

Happy Fourth of July! Thank you to all of you great VISTAs who work so hard to fight poverty in our country and in our state. You really make a difference. Enjoy your holiday!

Summer of Service

I thought you might like to hear about Summer of Service so far! We have had 4 projects and they have all turned out great!

Our kickoff project was at Provo North Park. We made 11 tree aprons.


Our second project was at Community Action Services and Food Bank. We decorated 96 treat bags for Community Action clients and wrote 25 letters to the troops in Afghanistan.


For our third project, we had the opportunity to help CUCIL (a local nonprofit which helps people with disabilities) at their annual 5K race/fundraiser. We had a lot of fun and the event was a success for CUCIL!


And last, but not least we helped at the Community Garden in Provo yesterday. We were able to weed and water many plots.

Help United Way Win $100,000!

We need your help to win $100,000 for United Way of Utah County! (many of our VISTAs work here or with agencies that are part of United Way)

APX Alarm is hosting a project called APX Gives Back where participants are encouraged to vote for their favorite charities on Facebook. The charities with the most votes will be eligible to win either the grand prize of $100,000 or one of 5 runner-up prizes of $30,000. This means you can help us win part of $250,000 just by voting on Facebook in five simple steps.

We have already made it to the second round and with your help, we have a good chance of winning! Vote for us each day to help us advance the common good of Utah County.

1. Log on to your Facebook account and visit this link

2. Go to the Application

3. Click “Click to Start Voting”

4. Click “Mountain”

5. Scroll down until you find United Way of Utah County and click “vote this charity”

You can vote once a day, every day! Keep voting until August 23, when winners will be announced!