Collaborative News

Volunteer Glynn: A Win, Win, Win Proposition
by Laurie Searle
Staff Writer

Remember when you were a kid looking forward to being lazy during summer vacation? After the first week of hanging out with your friends, you would have given your eye tooth for something — anything — interesting to do.

The United Way of Coastal Georgia, the Family Connection collaborative in Glynn County, suspected as much when they developed Volunteer Glynn, a program to help area youth build job and leadership skills after school and over their summer vacations.

Morehouse College students volunteer in Glynn County as part of their educational experience.

The collaborative, which was formerly called United Way of Brunswick and Glynn County, plans to officially kick off Volunteer Glynn soon but the collaborative didn't want to waste a summer of opportunity, so they recently sent their volunteer coordinator Tiffany Brennaman to Glynn Academy High School to start recruiting students.

Brennaman presented information on the program to several classes at the top of each hour for one full day. She discussed the benefits of volunteering in the community, how it helps the kids build leadership and job skills, and how volunteering helps businesses meet their objectives by temporarily adding to their staff. By the end of the day, she left the high school with high hopes and a sign up sheet of 50 students interested in volunteering.

The program went beyond initial expectations. Brennaman placed at least 40 students in different jobs that gave the students practical business experience. They worked on a variety of projects including researching grants, mailing promotional materials for an upcoming event, making scrapbook clippings for front offices, and more.

In fact the students had so much fun, they started spreading the word about Volunteer Glynn. Before long, parents of other students were calling to find out how their kids could volunteer.

Glynn County collaborative coordinator Saundra Hathaway said she is very excited about the outcome.

"We intended to start the volunteer program with adults but ended up working with youth," Hathaway said. "Little did we know that the kids would be so successful, they would become our marketing tool to get adults involved. And to think that we didn't even spend any money. We just invested some staff labor and look at results we got."

With Volunteer Glynn, kids benefit, the collaborative benefits, and the community benefits. Volunteer Glynn is a win, win, win proposition all around.