Journal Reflection

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Mission of the organization

Jersey Views focuses on volunteerism in New Jersey to empower and motivate everyone to make a powerful change. The organization focuses on increasing the attitude of volunteers through an engagement that tends to create an efficient, impactful managing process for projects and identifies and resolves critical community needs. Jersey Cares strategically organize such events and programs that bring engagement of community through volunteer service in order to support low- or mid--income teenagers to help them develop skills that they can further use in college studies.

Clients of the Organization

The main focus of Jersey Care is to close the opportunity gap in Essex County. The organization helps to improve the specialized training of teenagers who reside around Newark and also helps to reduce unemployment in youth. The organization uses two key workforce improvement programs that help in achieving the mentioned purposes. These programs include the Youth Workforce Development Fellowship and the Summer Youth Employment Program. The programs are developed to help out teens of low to moderate income families. These programs focus on building a connection between young people and employment opportunities through professional training. The organization helps to provide fellowship programs to selected fellows through some of Newark’s biggest companies. The students selected by “Jersey Care” for fellowship programs assist to drive social change by working as the company’s ambassadors. They are trained to lead and supervise sustainable projects at different agencies. The young people trained by Jersey Care work on school supply drive, the Jersey Care coat drive, animal shelter helpers and first-night kit program.

Services of the Organizations

Every project has its requirements and standards. The company’s Skills-Based Program is linked and associated with nonprofit organizations to detect and categorize their needs. They also work with Jersey Care volunteers who help incorporate sector to evaluate the impact areas that can be best assisted by their expertise. However, Jersey Care makes sure to incorporate all fields of life whether schools, city parks, domestic violence centers, community centers, etc. with:

Conduct workshops on anti-bullying, nourishment, public health & STEM 

School supply drive

Hoop garden building

Painting of trails designed for fitness purposes

Providing First Night Kit or arranging a birthday party for people in shelters

Creating chocolate bridges or dream pillowcases with students

Teaching people about financial literacy

Workshops on Structured Resume building

Seasonal campaigns on the cleaning of beaches and storm fence installation

Setting up picnic tables and bed assemblies

Activities on building of greenhouses

While organizing every project, Jersey Care makes sure that they identify an ideal location that is compatible with volunteers during their spare time. The size and scope of a project organized by Jersey Care usually depends on the number of volunteers that are participating in that program. The organization is well trained in making sure to provide necessary on field management of the project. After the completion of the project, the administration of the organization makes sure to conduct an evaluation at the end and guide their volunteers for the future.

Leaders and Decision Makers

The administration of the organization includes some very strong and determined people who work day and night to provide young people with the opportunities to shine bright in their careers. Brian Dean who is the president and CEO of the company has led it from a single employee organization to a well-recognized organization of $2.4M. It has increased its volunteers up by almost 4 times. This achievement, however, wouldn't have been possible without Director of operations Patrice Johnson and vice president Michelle Dee. Other major decision-makers in the company include Joe Vaccaro, Evan Lewis, and Kristen Coppola who deals with resource development, corporate relations, and external affairs respectively. Other people in a position of leadership include Brenda Teed who is a director of health in the community and Hesham Jamil who is the program manager along with the list of many other talented and skillful individuals.

My Experience:

My experience with Jersey care was in their school supply drive. I was involved with Jersey Cares because they have a mission to work with schools and children's shelters in order to provide them with basic necessities so that no one in the community will have to experience the first day of school without them. I volunteered to help them with buying

Backpacks

Subject Notebooks

Calculators

Folders

Book covers

Highlighters

My other experience with them involves working with them in their Jersey care coat drive. They have been continuously running this drive from the past 20+ years to collect and distribute gently used winter coats for underprivileged women, men and children

Stand out Activities

The two things that stood out the most to me was their school supply drive and their Frosty's friend program. These things stood out the most because I feel that the best thing to invest in your youth and the next generation. Although all the programs initiated by Jersey cares are a direct investment in young men and women. However, through these two programs, you can nurture a young boy and girl to return the investment in the future. Children usually feel the emotions more as compared to adults so an act of kindness will leave a more long-lasting effect on them as compared to that of adults. Jersey care through these motivational and helpful drives makes sure that children don't struggle academically because of any lack of resources. The underprivileged children receive gifts and valuable items from different shelters and non-profit organizations across the state. In return, Jersey care helps them through their volunteers in corporate programs.

Improvement in Initiated Drives

Overcoming any educational disadvantage is not easy. Many students even before they enter the school to start learning something has been significantly affected by their backgrounds and upbringing. These issues mainly include style of upbringing, social class, cultural background and most importantly the family income of that specific child. Jersey care is doing an amazing job of bridging those gaps. However, I think to give students more importance and value Jersey care should also involve and corporate with different schools to allow students more freedom in what they do. For example, students should be allowed to control the type of assignments they do. Teachers should provide the topic but the way students do that should be left on them. This may give students more freedom and may as well motivate them.

Secondly, Jersey care should also focus more on open online courses to help young students. The progress of technology and access to cheap internet facilities have made distance learning a step in improving one's knowledge. Thomas Friedman has commented on this by saying that nothing is more helpful to lift people out of poverty than open online courses ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"tc0vQnpB","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Evans and McIntyre)","plainCitation":"(Evans and McIntyre)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":14,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/cYhHNKoU/items/U4BH6TCS"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/cYhHNKoU/items/U4BH6TCS"],"itemData":{"id":14,"type":"article-journal","title":"MOOCs in the humanities: Can they reach underprivileged students?","container-title":"Convergence","page":"313-323","volume":"22","issue":"3","author":[{"family":"Evans","given":"Suzannah"},{"family":"McIntyre","given":"Karen"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2016"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Evans, Suzannah and McIntyre). One other way jersey care can help students is through helping schools in underprivileged areas itself rather than students. They should participate more with Human rights education to help people that live in an underprivileged area. HRE is a crucial component of historical and current social movements and activism ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"hxhAwaii","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Bronson)","plainCitation":"(Bronson)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":15,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/cYhHNKoU/items/KM8FD8LF"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/cYhHNKoU/items/KM8FD8LF"],"itemData":{"id":15,"type":"article-journal","title":"Human rights education for underprivileged high school students","container-title":"Peace Review","page":"46-53","volume":"24","issue":"1","author":[{"family":"Bronson","given":"Jennifer"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2012"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Bronson). It can not only help students in their education but will also have huge impacts on the future of society as well.

My experience related to that field has taught me that if you are determined you can achieve anything. Jersey care is a New Jersey based non-profit organization, through its online marketing it can be spread out to the entirety of America and the continent. We can find many volunteers that can help us achieve our goals and eradicate poverty through mutual help.

Work Cited

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Bronson, Jennifer. “Human Rights Education for Underprivileged High School Students.” Peace Review, vol. 24, no. 1, 2012, pp. 46–53.

Evans, Suzannah, and Karen McIntyre. “MOOCs in the Humanities: Can They Reach Underprivileged Students?” Convergence, vol. 22, no. 3, 2016, pp. 313–23.