Girl Scouts

Girl Scouts outreach aims to give girls from low income areas and opportunity to become a Girl Scout. Not only do they get to participate in a social program that they would have otherwise not had the opportunity to do, but they also learn STEM, finance, and leadership skills that will help them busy and out of trouble. The Girl Scouts Outreach program can really make a difference in the lives of many girls.

Volunteers also get to enjoy the fun activities that Girl Scouts offers. Volunteer troop leaders can take the girls on trips to the museum, go camping, have parties, or even go outside and play sports with them. It is a great feeling to watch the girls tell the volunteer how much they love coming to Girl Scouts. The enthusiasm that the Girls get when they organize and execute a plan is priceless. They learn how great it is to accomplish their goals. Girl Scouts really provides these girls with a chance to succeed.

The Girl Scouts Outreach program combines meaningful skills like, leadership, friendship, and many others with fun and rewarding activities. It allow the girls to learn while having fun. The program also brings out the best in all the girls. The quiet girls begin to speak up, the outgoing ones learn to give others a chance to express their opinions. It is an amazing program that leads Girls into success.

Environmental Action Team

The toasty autumn sun on your cheeks, the feel of soil as it crumbles in your fingers, the clean scent of fresh morning dew, lush green vegetation in a vast expanse, and the thumping of your heart after a long morning of volunteer work. It does not get more hands on than this.

Last October, volunteers from the Environmental Action Team worked on an urban farm located right on the outskirts of downtown Salt Lake City. This farm is part of a program called Real Food Rising, which is an initiative with Utahns Against Hunger. This initiative is aimed at providing sustainable agriculture and hunger relief for the community.  

The food that Real Food Rising grows gets donated to food pantries, sold at local farm stands, and some being sold to restaurants. As members of the Environmental Action team, our primary goal is to help improve the quality of our environment through service. In doing this, you will learn valuable new skills by participating in conservation and sustainability projects here

in Utah. Volunteering with Real Food Rising was a great opportunity for us to incorporate all of the goals of EAT into something both tangible and rewarding.

Being able to learn about sustainable agriculture and working hands on really made me feel the difference that we were making as a group, and it motivated many of us to want to be more involved and active with environmental sustainability. After a long morning of work, the volunteers from EAT weeded, cultivated, and sowed 1200 square feet of organic vegetable crops on the farm.

This is just a small taste of what we do at EAT, if you are interested in volunteering with us, please reach out to Kate at eatvolunteers@gmail.com.

Kate Zhao

Program Director

Environmental Action Team 

Teen's Night Out

Teen’s Night Out (TNO) serves the youth residents at The Road Home.  Along with

The Road Home’s mission we aim to “help people step out of homelessness and back

into our community”.  TNO contributes to this mission by providing weekly

activities for The Road Home’s youth.  Our activities focus on allowing homeless

teens to forget the hardships of being homeless, and focus more on being a teenager.

The teens we serve appear, and act like any other group of teenagers.  They

attend school, hate homework, play sports, and think they can drive a ten-passenger

van.  What makes them different are the dangers that surround them.  These

dangers come in the form of drugs, violence, hunger, oppression, discrimination, and

the elements.  These teens in their situational poverty are limited by homelessness,

and their environment blinds them from a brighter future.  TNO offers a glimpse to a

brighter, more secure future.  We allow them to see and experience things that

poverty would never allow them to see, and for a moment they overcome poverty.

At the moment they are still limited to what poverty can provide.  TNO

continues to provide that weekly glimpse into a brighter future.  We hope that the

teens experiences and interactions at TNO will be that moment where poverty

doesn’t exist for out teens.

If you're interested in volunteering with the Teen's Night Out program, or are looking for more information, check out our Volunteer Now tab on our website, www.bennioncenter.org 

Logan Prince

Program Director

Teen's Night Out, The Road Home 

Student Leader Positions Available!

Are interested in getting more involved with the Bennion Center? Do you need some leadership experience? 

Bennion Center Student Board, 2014-15

We still have several student leader positions open for this 2014-2015 school year! The Bennion Center would be nothing without service-minded, engaged students like you driving our mission forward. One of the things that sets the BC apart from other community service centers on campuses across the nation is the fact that we are a student-run organization. We are extremely lucky to have the talented, diverse, supportive staff as our scaffolding in the BC, but the bulk of leadership is through students. So, if you want a bit more of your college experience, apply for one of these positions today!

Listed below are the positions we still are looking to fill and a brief description of what the position entails. Feel free to hop over to our website, www.bennioncenter.org for more information, or reach out to us on Facebook, Twitter, or comment hear, and we'll get you the information you need! 

Education and Advocacy:

Bud Bailey Apartment Community Tutoring (Program Director position) 

• Recruit students to participate in this program
• Act as the leader to assist in organizing tutoring activities
• Attend weekly tutoring sessions
• Assist in evaluating the efficacy of the program and track participation
• Coordinate with Services Coordinator to ensure appropriate and successful engagement with participant

SOARE  (Program Director position)

• Meet with Mountain View teachers to assess needs and plan
• Use or make contacts on campus willing to host field trips
• Coordinate hosts and Mountain View
• Report success to Bennion Center
• Manage volunteers
• Act as chaperone on field trips

Health and Ability: 

Meals on Wheels (Program Director position)

• Coordinate and schedule volunteers to deliver meals.
• Ensure that meals are delivered in a timely manner.
• Plan for back-up volunteers in the event that a volunteer cannot make it to his/her assigned day.
• Meals will be delivered to the Bennion Center by 10:00am Monday-Friday. Volunteers have until 2:00pm to deliver 8-10 meals to homes located near the University of Utah Campus. The Student Program Director is expected to serve as a volunteer within the program.

VA Nursing Home (Program Director position)

• Volunteer at least once a week for two hours.
• Schedule volunteers to fill time slots (at least 2 hours/day).
• Recruit/maintain an email list of all volunteering UofU (BC) students.
• Plan at least one volunteer project for the Activities Department.
• Act in a professional and respectful manner.

Back-Farms Program with Green Urban Lunchbox

We’re spotlighting our Back-Farms program with Green Urban Lunchbox, which is a program where we pair up volunteers with low income senior citizens that have the room for a garden. Volunteers learn new gardening techniques every week as well as getting to take home a third of the harvest! In all of the programs with Green Urban Lunchbox, the remaining harvest is taken to food banks around the city.

The program had 30 volunteers that rendered a collective 90 hours of service this past June. 16 gardens were maintained, and from those gardens, 200 pounds of cherries were donated to Meals on Wheels, and 400 apricots were harvested and donated! Program Director Courtney Dean reflected on the service:

“In June we harvested pounds and pounds of cherries. Most of the grade A fruit went to Meals on Wheels who delivers meals to seniors all around our city. The seniors were more than ecstatic about receiving the fresh fruit! The Green Urban Lunchbox was featured in the Salt Lake Tribune for making a contribution to senior's lives by simple providing fresh fruit for their enjoyment. Many of whom had not had fresh fruit, especially cherries in quite some time. Providing something as simple as fruit, which I buy weekly for myself, to someone who doesn't have the financial privilege to buy such things is an amazing feeling. People simply don't have access to health food, even if they wanted to live a healthier life style it cannot always be incorporated into their daily lives. Seniors have a set budget without much room for wiggle, providing them with something that is a standard for living should be a goal of every community.”

For more information on the program, check out their website here, and if you're interested in volunteering with the program, check out the link here to sign up with us at the Bennion Center! 

Rudi Zurbuchen Spotlight

BENNION CENTER 2013-2014 SPOTLIGHT

Rudi Zurbuchen: Hospice Care Program Director

                                                           

What is the best advice you have ever received?

A smile and positive attitude can make any experience pleasant and fun. Happiness and positive attitudes are contagious. You are in charge of how you experience a life event.

If your life had a theme song, what would it be?

The Best Day-Taylor Swift

Do you have a recurring dream? If so, what is it?

Traveling the world with a small suitcase and living with locals.

What would you do with the money if you won the lottery?

I would use the necessary money to get back to Italy. The remaining I would give to the study abroad office to give out as scholarships.

What are the 5 things you cannot live without?

Toothpaste, my violin, frozen yogurt, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows,  and chap-stick.

What would your perfect date consist of?

Hiking to a waterfall, making pasta together, going to get frozen yogurt, and sitting in a hot tub under the stars with a root-beer float.  

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Hopefully in medical school with a small dog.

Andrew Reeve Spotlight

BENNION CENTER 2013-2014 SPOTLIGHT

Andrew Reeve: VA Nursing Home

                      

                            

What is the best advice you have ever received?

The best advice that I have ever received is to follow your dreams. Life is full of ups and downs, but in the end if you are following your dreams and doing what is best for you, you will be content.

If your life had a theme song, what would it be?

See of Air- Portugal. The man.

Where is the furthest you have traveled?

Patagonia, Southern Argentina

What has been the happiest moment of your life so far?

I am the happiest when I am traveling and meeting new people and discovering new cultures and ways of life. I am always the happiest outside of the country, living in distant places.

What would your perfect date consist of?

My perfect date would consist of a day skiing the back country or a nice climb to the peak of a mountain and a picnic.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

I see myself traveling the world and following my dreams in 5 years. I want to see more and more of this beautiful planet and help out those who are in need. Hopefully I will be in a job where I can accomplish both of those goals - living somewhere in a far distant place learning everything I can about the people and cultures I encounter.

Brittany Thurgood Spotlight

BENNION CENTER 2013-2014 SPOTLIGHT

Brittany Thurgood: Arts For Youth

                                                          

What is the best advice you have ever received?

Do something you love and you won’t have to go to work. 

If your life had a theme song, what would it be?

A country song.

Do you have a recurring dream? If so what is it?

I don't have any recurring dreams. However, I still remember a recurring nightmare I had when I was a child. I was in a grocery store hiding in an ice freezer from a monster. I had this same nightmare because I was always alone in the freezer and I would wake up just as the shadow of the monster is about to open the freezer door.

What is your  biggest pet peeve?

People who are rude to others and themselves. I really can't stand being around that type of negativity

What are the 5 things you cannot live without?

Family, Friends, God, Food, and Books.

What has been the happiest moment of your life so far?

Seeing people I haven't seen in a long time. 1. When I moved to Utah and was able to spend holidays with my family. 2. Visiting my old friends in different states

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Still in school. Hopefully in medical school.