The Seattle-King County Asset Building Collaborative will be having their annual Financial Fitness day on March 31^st. They have joined with over 40 community partners to be able to bring community members FREE financial services. These services include everything from one-on-one help filling out a tax return, printing and analyzing free credit reports, opening bank accounts, creating a household budget, working with a financial planner, applying for public benefits (food, utilities, child care, health insurance, social security), learning how to start a business, shredding…

When I dropped my son off at preschool this morning, it was 29 degrees outside.  Not a warm morning to say the least, but at least it wasn’t raining, and I was off to help a group of volunteers build a playground at West Fenwick Park in Kent.

What I found when I arrived was about 30 volunteers from United Way, The Seattle Seahawks, GMC and a playground building company Sitelines, all digging in the frozen earth and laughing.

The build was part of…

We all recognize the contribution of volunteers – in youth sports, health promotion, emergency services, faith communities, social services and the environment.  We know that volunteers are involved in just about every aspect of service delivery in all walks of life.  But, we sometimes forget to acknowledge that volunteers don’t “just happen”.  Behind this army of volunteers there exists an equally dedicated group of individuals and agencies who are responsible for the coordination, support, training, administration and recruitment of the world’s volunteers.  They are skilled professionals…

Congratulations to our colleagues at the King County Library System for being named the Gale/Library Journal 2011 Library of the Year, arguably the biggest honor in the library world. One of the busiest libraries in the U.S., KCLS serves more than 1.3 million King County residents each year, circulating more items than any other library system in the country. Some of the lucky recipients of KCLS services? The thousands of preschoolers who’ve been paired with adults who share books with them weekly through…

When Volunteer Reader Tammie Treibley enters the classroom, she loves hearing the children exclaim “Ms. Tammie is here!”

 Tammie starts with the book “Waddle!,” and asks the kids, “Can you waddle like a penguin? Can you hop like a frog?” Tammie explains that the children “love to act out the actions with the book”.  The book never fails to capture their attention.

 Another crowd pleaser is “I Stink,” a story about a trash collector truck.  Tammie highly recommends the Volunteer Reader experience for anyone who enjoys…

Greetings from the Volunteer Reader Program!  Last Thursday evening, we had another wonderful Volunteer Reader Program Training and we would like to give a special thank you to Maren Ostergard with the King County Library System for providing the training and for another great job!  Volunteer Readers learned about the dialogic reading method, 6 essential Early Literacy skills (Print Motivation, Print Awareness, Vocabulary, Narrative Skills, Letter Knowledge and Phonological Awareness), were introduced to a variety of new books, were able to ask questions of current…

KPLU 88.5′s reporter Charla Bear did a great piece today on 14 year old Sanigiah Ysa, a volunteer for our Free Tax Prep program. Read or listen to the story here.

Thank you to Sanigiah and to all of our Free Tax Preparation Volunteers who have worked so hard making sure people are getting the returns they have earned.

We’ve wrapped up Hunger Action Week, five days dedicated to raising awareness about hunger in our community.

So now what?

It’s time to take action. There are many ways you can get involved, and we’re sure that you can come up some creative ideas too. Here’s what Mary Shaw, one of our staff members at United Way of King County, said she chose to do.

“I thought I could get involved by doing a virtual hunger awareness lunch. OK, I guess I am not

…

Hunger Action Week is in its last day.  It has been a great week.  There are a lot of people taking the Hunger Challenge and writing about it and even more joining the discussion.  The Hunger Challenge has certainly been the most public part of HAW, but there is so much more going on.  People are helping United Way and our partners by donating to support improvements to food banks, additional trucks for meals delivery programs, and bringing the farm to food banks.  It’s exhilarating…

Chicken Soup Brigade was formed in the early 1980’s by a group of volunteers who were determined to regularly bring good food and a friendly face to people struggling with HIV and AIDS. Nearly 30 years later, the program — now run by Lifelong AIDS Alliance — remains committed to helping meet the nutritional and social needs of people fighting illness and isolation. And guess what?