Friday, April 13, 2007

Gearing Up for the Big Finish!

Our last big event of the program year is coming up, the HIPPY Regional Conference, which we are hosting here in Dallas. After that, we will be winding the year down with many smaller efforts, including on-site visits to each of our programs, finishing up evaluation efforts for the year, and a volunteer development event held in collaboration with Half Price Books and Meet Up. Yesterday we had our last all-member event with HIPPYCorps members from across the state joining together via video conference to celebrate and share succees stories of their parent involvement efforts for the year. Here's some of what they shared:

  • Volunteering hours have increased this year because members are role modeling volunteer activities in the school, and are giving parents ideas and motivation each week during the home visits.
  • At one school in Austin where there was very little volunteering, three of our HIPPY moms started going in once a week and having coffee at the school then volunteering. Their energy drew the interest of other parents and now the group has grown.
  • A cluster of 4 HIPPY moms at another school are volunteering FULL TIME at their schools now.
  • Special projects with parents included a book drive and distribution in Snyder, a health fair in Irving, and a book fair in Richardson.
Very soon we'll start sending out thank yous to each of our parents who completed 20+ hours of volunteering this school year.

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