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.

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.

Building doors instead of holding signs

For the past year the fossil fuels divestment campaigns started to spread across the country. Today there are over 100 cities and states, 300 colleges and 10 other institutions with campaigns that aim to freeze fossil fuels investments and divest from direct ownership that include fossil fuel public equities and corporate bonds within 5 years.

The national organization behind the divestment campaign is 350.org. It was founded in 2008 by U.S author Bill McKibben, who wrote one of the firsts books about climate change to the general public. “350” stands for 350 parts per million (ppm) which according to scientists is the safe upper limit for CO2 in the atmosphere to keep temperature rise below 2 °C and ease the effects of global warming. With thousands of volunteer organizers in over 188 countries, 350 is building a global grassroots movement to solve climate change.

The popularity of the divestment movement inspired the organizers to partner up with several local organizations across the country during the summer to provide fellowships for 38 student divestment activists of over 30 different colleges and universities. The primary goals of this brand new program are to build bridges across the movement and increase the student’s organizing skills.

I got involved working on the divestment campaign at the University of Utah with several other students. When I heard about this fellowship opportunity, I applied right away. I thought it would be a great way to fill the gap between being an active student in the university and becoming a more active citizen in the community. I was so excited to be selected but also surprised to be the only student from the Northwest of the country to be in that group.

The fellowship kick-off was a week-long training early in June at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. It was over 60 hours of strategy, planning, organizing, action, media and non-violent direct action (NVDA) training. We were also taught thoroughly about the stages of social movement, SMART goals, recruitment and retention. The week was well structured and provided a good foundation for us to work during the summer. It gave us the valuable experience of meeting new people and making connections, and knowing that although we come from different places and backgrounds we have the same objectives and we’re not working by ourselves.

One of the parts that struck to me the most and was a good way to start the week was to getting to know the problems and how people reacted to them or the difference between truth and meaning. Instead of pushing the truth to people we have to meet them where they’re at and approach by what the truth means to them. I particularly appreciated the leadership training and getting to know your skills as a leader and the kinds of qualities that are essential to be successful in this role. Becoming a good leader includes being humble, a good listener and leading by example but also teaching. Let’s build doors, create opportunities, invite and empower people instead of simply holding signs and making noise.

I’m excited to work this summer as the Volunteer Coordinator for Peaceful Uprising. They do a wonderful job in Utah advocating for climate and social justice and their main campaign starting right now is to stop tar sands mining in the U.S. I’m grateful to be able to extend the experience and skills I developed working as a student leader at the Bennion Center for the past 4 and a half years and I know that I wouldn't be as involved in the community or even selected for this fellowship if it weren't for the opportunities I had here.

- Tammy Reque, Social Justice Coordinator