International Youth Day (IYD) is observed each year on August 12. Endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1999, IYD is an opportunity to draw attention to youth issues worldwide. This year’s theme focuses on “Youth and Mental Health” under the slogan of “Mental Health Matters.”
What’s a great way to help ensure healthy, active, and independent living throughout your life? Volunteering. Contributing to your family, peers and community by volunteering is important at every age. When individuals volunteer, they not only help their community but also experience better health in later years, whether in terms of greater longevity, higher levels of functioning or lower rates of depression.
July 18 is the birthday of the late Nelson Mandela. Across the globe, he will be remembered for his sacrifices for and leadership in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and his commitment to service. Volunteers celebrate this legacy on “Mandela Day”, which was created in 2009 to inspire people to serve as he did and as he urged others to do. This year the call to serve on July 18 has inspired over 1,000 activities in 126 countries. While the activities are as diverse as the volunteers, many of them will focus on this year’s theme of food security.
Education is the cornerstone of individual and community success. What can we do to improve education in our communities? Pledging to become a volunteer reader, tutor or mentor is one way to help children and youth achieve their potential. Another is to tap into the energy of motivated teenagers and help them understand how to contribute to early grade education.
Employers take note. One-third of millennials surveyed said that their companies’ volunteer policies affected their decision to apply for a job, 39 percent said that it influenced their decision to interview, and 55 percent said that such policies played into their decision to accept an offer.
Last month hundreds of United Ways across the U.S. and the world brought thousands of volunteers together in a worldwide Day of Action on June 21.
United Way has partnered with the Corporation for National and Community Service to bring the talent and commitment of AmeriCorps VISTAs to United Way to help students across the country succeed in low-performing schools. Here’s the first of many updates about their great work.
June 21 is the 7th annual United Way Day of Action, a day when people across the globe volunteer with United Way to make their corner of the world a better place for all.
United Way Day of Action brings volunteers together throughout the world to help shore up the building blocks of a good life: Education, Income, and Health. Day of Action underscores that we are all connected and interdependent. We all win when a child succeeds in school, when families are financially stable, when people are healthy.
What better way to volunteer – and to work toward helping people live healthier lives -- than to be active on Day of Action?