A video tour of the coolest bathroom in DC, and just an FYI: 16% of cellphones have poop on them. Better get Clorox wiping!

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how about a video? Video marketing drives traffic to your business!

The heat is getting a bit more bearable, the outdoor water activities are coming to a standstill, and the leaves are starting to change color. This can only mean one thing (well, it can mean a lot of things actually): the first fall semester for freshman students is fast approaching. Or already starting! Among all of the dorm move-ins, awkward icebreakers, late night cram sessions, and spectator sport adventures you are about to embark on, we have one more thing to throw your way. The Compass Fellowship, in association with The Kenneth Cole Foundation, is looking for 180 freshman students across participating campuses to join Compass Community. So what is Compass Community exactly (besides sounding like something out of The Chronicles of Narnia)?

The Compass Community is made up of young, passionate social innovators who will be given opportunities to interact with business leaders locally and nationally. Fellows will work alongside Mentors to encourage adventurous thinking and proactive participation. The peer-driven curriculum will inspire, push and empower Fellows to achieve what they do best.

Not only will being a part of the Compass Fellowship look great for experience and achievements on your resume, but it will open up your social boundaries, where you will meet people who have similar interests as you. In a sea of thousands of other students like you, it is always helpful to join clubs and organizations like this, just to help the friend-making process a little easier. And when college starts, we need all the help we can get!

The Compass Fellowship will be hitting up 10 campuses across the nation, including San Francisco, Boston, and DC, as well as 2 campuses in Sweden, for a grand total of 180 Compass Fellows. Applications can be found here.

Looking for a cool place to volunteer, but having a hard time deciding where? The Washington City Paper had readers poll to find out where the best places to volunteer in 2011 are. Here were the results:

1. AARP Legal Counsel for the Elderly - Provides free legal and social work services to those in need. According to their website, volunteers can be retired people, undergraduate students, law students, retired attorneys and attorneys between jobs or careers

2. Potomac Conservancy - A land trust dedicated to preserving the scenic and natural Potomac River. Volunteer opportunities include hands-on outdoor activities, river center guides, administrative volunteers, photographers and videographers.

3. Food & Friends - Provides meals, groceries and nutrition counseling to people living with life-challenging illnesses such as AIDS and cancer. Volunteer areas of interest: deliver meals & friendship, slide & dice, administrative help, special events, group volunteers, Thanksgiving week and day, etc.

Happy volunteering!

speakinloud:

HOPE is the little voice you hear whisper ‘maybe’ when it seems the entire world is shouting ‘no’.

We love Harry Potter here at myImpact.org! What better excuse to promote it than an inspirational quote from Dumbledore?

Yesterday, our Executive Director Chris Golden was at a Celebration of Service for the 2011 PARADE All-American High School Team. Here’s his blog post wrapping up the event:

chris-golden:

When you open your copy of PARADE Magazine in the Sunday paper this weekend, you’ll find the story of 15 inspiring young people between the ages of 16-18, who are were selected as a part of the 2011 Parade All-American Service Team, picked by the Magazine and generationOn, a division of the Points of Light Institute. 

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to meet them at a service celebration held at Washington’s Newseum, keynoted by US Education Secretary Arne Duncan. (see photo, below). In this time of great challenge for the service sector, as we balance expanded need from a stubborn jobless recession and enormous fiscal restraints which threaten the strategic goals we authorized just two years ago, it was a moment to come together and remember exactly why we do the work that we do.

Photo Above: Education Secretary Arne Duncan delivers keynote remarks

In many ways, the stories of the award winners are similar. Each student described themselves as normal. Of course, we know they are anything but. Each saw a need in their community (defined broadly as place where they grew up, nation as a whole, or world). Each took action and, in the process, each knocked down some barriers and withstood pressure from those would have preferred they not become involved. And each succeeded, and continues to succeed, in their tasks. 

Their stories echo the power and potential of youth service in America:

• Joe Burgum, 18, who has collected 300 tons of food and $225,000 in donations for North Dakotans in need
• Jonny Cohen, 16, founder of GreenShields, which is working to reduce the carbon emission of school busses (and, like myImpact.org, a Pepsi Refresh Project grantee)
• Grace Li, 16, who founded We Care Act to raise awareness & support following devastating earthquakes in China 
• Rujul Zaparde, 16, who co-founded a non-profit called Drinking Water for India and has paid for the construction of 31 wells to date

Photo above: The Award-Winning Team

Recognition of ordinary people, especially young people, who are doing amazing things is extraordinarily important and generationOn, PARADE, and Points of Light deserve a lot of credit for their hard work in doing so. Even The White House sent a representative to the awards ceremony, Ronnie Cho, who is the Administration’s new liaison to young Americans. 

But recognition and support is only one piece. If you asked any of the award winners, I’m sure they would say that they would much rather have preferred to give up their moment in the spotlight in order to ensure that their efforts are sustainable in the long-term and actually solve the problems that they seek to address. This sentiment was expressed in a Q&A with the award winners after they were honored. We need to shift the conversation from ‘what happened?’ to ‘what changed?’, we have to look at engagement in a much broader context, we have to think about the barriers that are preventing some young people from even having the opportunity to turn an idea into a reality like this award winners have. It starts with making sure that young people have a seat at the table and that their (our) voices are heard.

Photo above: Youth Service America President Steve Culbertson introduces award winners in the environment category. 

For more information on the award winners and to see behind-the scenes photos and videos from PARADE Magazine, visit parade.com/service

To learn more about generationON and Points of Light institute visit www.generationon.org and www.pointsoflight.org  

10 Fun Facts from Volunteering in America:

1.  62.8 million adults served almost 8.1 billion hours through organizations in 2010. We know. The outrageous numbers are hurting our heads, too.

2.  Generation X (born 1965-1981) gave more than 2.3 billion hours of their time volunteering. That’s more than double the rate since 1989!

3.  The term “volunteer lifecycle” is the civic involvement that tends to increase as citizens feel a deeper connection to their communities through personal networks, their workplace and their children’s schools.

4.  Volunteer rates for young adults (ages 20-24) tend to be lower than teenage volunteer rates…

5.  …However, the national volunteer rate tends to increase with age until mid-life, with the peak age occurring between the mid-30s to early 40s!

6.  The top 5 states by volunteer rates are: Utah, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota.

7.  The Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan ranks number one for volunteerism among large cities…for the fifth year in a row. Congrats!

8.  Governors and mayors are actively encouraging volunteerism, recognizing those volunteers who make particularly large impacts.

9.  Some of the activities volunteers took part in: tutoring and mentoring, selling items at auctions to raise money, and collecting and distributing food.

10.  Researchers believe that the finding that the decline in volunteer rates in older adults has become less severe over time is explained by the fact that more Americans are staying healthier longer and that volunteering has become a more recognized strategy for staying healthy in older adulthood.