10 Reasons to Fall in Love with GYSD & Save the Date for April 23-25, 2021

 

10 Reasons to Fall in Love with GYSD

& Save the Date for April 23-25, 2021

Save the date… Global Youth Service Day (GYSD) is April 23-25, 2021! If you haven’t already set your heart to thinking about GYSD, here are ten reasons to fall in love with GYSD:

1. Have Fun – GYSD is a chance to have fun doing activities you enjoy while helping others. Search our #LeadASAP Idea Center for how you can use sports, music & art, reading & learning, animals & nature, or technology & science to make a difference in your community. 
2. Show How Much You Care – Join together with friends and peers in caring about others and the planet and making a difference in the areas of health & wellbeing, the environment, poverty & hunger, and education & equality.
3. Combine Your Passions & Causes for Impact – To choose a project, identify your spark (an activity that you love to do), your cause (the issue you want to address), and your ASAP action strategy (what type of a project you will lead). This video will guide you through these steps.
4. Make Yourself More Attractive to Colleges and Employers – Youth volunteers develop vital 21st Century college and career readiness skills, including Critical Thinking, Creativity, Collaboration, and Communication.
5. Apply Learning in a Practical Way – Starting or participating in a GYSD project is a great way to integrate classroom learning in a hands-on, practical approach, especially as part of a Semester of Service or a Classrooms with a Cause project. YSA’s Knowledge Center offers tools and resources to help you get started.
6. Spend Quality Family Time Together – GYSD is a chance for families to spend quality time while helping others. Volunteering provides an opportunity to learn new things together, and for kids to take a lead in planning and executing family projects.
7. Fulfill Volunteer Hours – With thousands of projects taking place during GYSD weekend, opportunities abound. GYSD is a great way to fulfill volunteer hours or community service requirements. Track your hours using InnerView and be eligible to receive awards recognizing your service this school year.
8. Help Your Community Recover from the Pandemic – Hopefully we’ll have made a lot of progress getting people vaccinated by GYSD, but your community will still need a lot of help to recover and return to normal. These 20 ideas can get you started.
9. Start to Address Systemic Racism – Every GYSD project can and should be an anti–racist service project. As youth lead substantive service projects, they learn empathy, question assumptions, examine root causes of problems, and gain problem-solving skills to create the difficult but vital changes that our society needs so badly. These guiding questions and resources – framed around the IPARDC planning process – can help you plan.

10. GYSD Can Be Virtual, Hybrid, or In-Person – In many parts of the country, the weather should be nice enough to allow for safe, socially-distanced outdoor projects, but virtual and at-home projects are cool too! Get ideas and resources here. While you’re stuck inside during the winter, you can create your own virtual Youth Service Institute to learn how to plan amazing projects!

     

    http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=0016LxqYDVKs18wklumCk1bicXI-ILrkCQldLDTZKO6_dl5jcz6O3v6dpfALdU3eQA3yEs4rmEhyhF1sa7hTCtkgXQN6XC_-64NXaNUViSHj0ek0Oaw12A-ZzfWXSVx5T_xShUZtmk4JHaoDzp5QTHC2VeP-APwKXmqmAs1_SyGiIUYmD09h5O-f4gpArz3Dx6Z&c=k9_DkOcW9o63sIsGTvj-alfRLVVazWSQL4S2hvj_OFS9S6ClNsYgrQ==&ch=e6sx0CIBdxhwFP8RlIKm9v4YMYSlfBLm4cNIROylCfiZ9porH7ZVGw==