William St. YMCA Looking for Volunteers

The YMCA is looking for volunteers to help out after school at its location at 585 William Street. Volunteers would help with tutoring and other activities with the children at the YMCA. Email: emfrontdesk@ymcabuffaloniagara.org if you would like to volunteer.

Debate Team Competition - Help Needed

On Saturday, December 8th, City Honors will host its first ever speech and debate tournament for the New York State Forensic League! We will welcome public and private schools from throughout Western and Central New York to compete in this tournament. This is a big moment for our team, school district and for City Honors. In order to properly host the event, we need student volunteers from grades 9-12.  Student volunteers will be greeting the visiting students/judges/coaches, directing them to the various gathering and competition rooms, helping keep breakfast and snack stations clean and stocked, running ballots back to the tab room, cleaning up at the end of day etc.... Student volunteers should wear some sort of CHS Gear. If you do not have any, we will get you some on the day of the event. Students in the IB Diploma program can earn ‘service to school’ CAS credits by volunteering on Saturday.   

If you would like to help out, please stop down to the main office and sign-up. There are three different shifts that you can sign up for to help on Saturday.

Volunteer Opportunity at CHS

The City Honors/Fosdick-Masten Park Foundation is putting on the 15th Annual Alumni Thanksgiving Party on Friday, November 23 from 6:30-9:30 pm in the atrium of City Honors. We need 10 volunteers to help set up, act as docents assigned to "stations" around the building during the event, and clean up after the event.

If you were to participate the entire time, you would come at 5:45 pm and leave around 10 pm.
Dress for the event is City Honors "gear" and a nice pair of jeans/khakis.

Please email me at: ebanas@buffaloschools.org if you can help out and let me know the hours you can work (please provide your cell phone number).

THANK YOU!!!

Pelion Community Garden Workday

The last community garden workday this Fall is this Friday, November 2, 2012 from noon to 3 pm. Students should sign up with Mr. Moses in the IB Office. Community members are also welcome - be sure to bring gardening gloves and dress for the weather!

Planting trees with Re-tree WNY!

The Foundry (an organization where our Pelion Garden community coordinator, Caesandra, helps out) is joining RE-TREE WNY's efforts to reforest Buffalo's tree inventory. They will be planting about 153 trees for the Masten/Cold Spring area.

 

Volunteers will meet at the Foundry, 298 Northampton St., for training and assignments at 9am on Saturday, November 3, 2012.
 

Please remember to BRING GLOVES, sunhat or sunscreen, and LAYERS in case it's hot/cold/wet.

Volunteer Opportunities at CHS

1. "THE CITY ON STAGE" MUSICAL SCENES 2012 is in need of Volunteers to help the days of the show: Friday, November 16th and Saturday, November 17th.The are Looking for Parents, Students and Faculty to help with Concessions, Raffles, Ticket Sales and Handing out Programs. 

2. Dr. Kresse is looking for a senior to help complete an alumni database. Please see him if you are interested.

3. October Work Day on the Pelion Garden is this SATURDAY, October 20th from 9am-12noon

They will be finishing mulching, building compost bins & transplanting plants!!
Bring work gloves and a shovel - all are welcome!! Please bring bags of leaves from your curbs! and/or some zip lock baggies if you would like to collect seeds for your garden.

Olmsted Parks Tree Planting on October 27

As part of the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy's urban reforestation effort, there will be a tree planting of 150 trees in Delaware Park on Saturday, October 27 from 9am until 12pm.  In addition to planting trees, volunteers will also assist in maintaining flower beds, leaf raking, and litter pick-up.  Children as young as 10 are permitted to participate with a parent or guardian.  If you're planning to volunteer please wear work and weather appropriate clothing (work boots and gloves) and bring your own tools if possible.

The tree planting will also serve as a Tool Drive for the Conservancy.  Volunteers are encouraged to donate a new or gently used tool and will be given an Olmsted water bottle as a token of our appreciation.  Desired tools include but are not limited to:
Spade shovels
Metal leaf rakes
Heavy duty rakes

For those looking to volunteer pre-registration is recommended.  Please email volunteer@bfloparks.org or call 716.838.1249 ext 15.  Volunteers will meet at the kiosk in Delaware Park at the intersection of Meadow Drive & Meadow Road near Nottingham Terrace.

Buffalo Sabres need your help August 15th!

Buffalo Sabres & Perry's Ice Cream Volunteers

The Buffalo Sabres & Perry’s Ice Cream are looking for your help! Join them on Wednesday, August 15th as they will be assembling backpacks for disadvantaged school children in the city of Buffalo as part of the United Way of Buffalo & Erie County’s Day of Caring program. Volunteers are needed to help ensure that as many deserving children can start the school year with the necessary supplies for success!

August 15, 2012
First Niagara Center
9:30am – 12:00pm

Complimentary lunch for all volunteers
Free parking
Free Tee Shirt for all volunteers
Fun and friendly environment.

Go to this website to sign up online (sorry, you will have to copy & paste the link to get to it): https://www.formstack.com/forms/?1258276-4dc2tuBIX4

If you have any questions or concerns, please email: Teresa.belbas@sabres.com.

Volunteer with UNYTS this summer

Unyts (formerly known as Upstate New York Transplant Services) is looking for volunteers to help with their Donate Life Street Squad. Interested volunteers will help promote the Unyts mission with the Donate Life Express Bus at summer festivals during the months of June, July, and August within the City of Buffalo. To get involved, contact Maureen MacIsaac at 716.853.6667 x3807 or mmacisaac@unyts.org.

The Dragon Boat Races at Gallagher Beach are seeking volunteers on 6/16

The event takes place at Gallagher Beach. It starts at 8 am and ends at 5 pm. Teams are made up of breast cancer survivors. Each volunteer will be given a t-shirt, lunch, and water on event day.


Students who wish to volunteer can register online (located at the bottom of the webpage).

Volunteer at the Special Olympics! June 15-17

This year the Summer Special Olympics are in Western New York. Organizers of the event have asking for volunteers because over 1000 volunteers will be needed to make the event a success and ensure the kids have a great experience.

There are two types of volunteers:

A Social Volunteer is:

A person or group who would like to have an experience that has an open schedule and open
opportunity to be our cheering section and hospitality greeters for our athletes. This is a very important role, as many athletes travel far and do not always have the opportunity for their families to attend and cheer them on. You would also attend the competitions and light the fire within these champions to give them that extra boost of encouragement to go for the gold!


A Service Volunteer is:

A person or group who is willing to commit and dedicate their day to the athletes and willing to do the job needed of them. These jobs can include, but are not limited too: set up, athlete escorts, stagers, timers, scorekeeping and etc.

To volunteer you only need to fill out the form and fax or mail it.

Click Here For Volunteer Form

Special Olympics NY State Summer Games Volunteers, 504 Balltown Road,
Schenectady, NY 12304-2290 or Fax it to: (518) 388-0795

Volunteers needed at Artisan Art Center

The Artisan Art Center has set up where Buffalo ReUse was located - 298 Northampton Street. They are looking for volunteers to help with anything from gardening, to store set-up, to organizing displays, to building small items. Call Megan at: 912-5529 if you would like to volunteer.

New study links participation in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme to college success among Chicago Public School students

University of Chicago study finds CPS students completing the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme are better prepared for college

Bethesda, Maryland, IB, March 22, 2012 – The University of Chicago study released today shows that Chicago Public School students enrolled in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme (DP) are 40 percent more likely to attend a four-year college, 50 percent more likely to attend a more selective college and significantly more likely to persist in four-year colleges for at least two years, compared to similar students who did not enroll in the IB Diploma Programme.  The Diploma Programme is an academically challenging programme for students in their junior and senior years of high school.

This study looked at high achieving students in CPS high schools who graduated from 2003 through 2007.  It included 1,888 students who enrolled in an IB cohort in the ninth grade; 62 percent of these students went on to enroll in the IB Diploma Programme in the eleventh grade.  The DP students come from 12 neighborhood high schools, and are predominantly first-generation college students; 67% were female, 33% were male, 37% were African American, 38%were Latino, 14% were Asian/Pacific Islander, 15% were white, and 77% were eligible for free or reduced price lunch.  The non-IB students in the study had the qualifications necessary to be eligible for the Diploma Programme.

IB students interviewed felt they were academically well-prepared to engage and succeed in college coursework and described strong analytical writing and math preparation, motivation, work habits, organization and time management as strengths.  “The University of Chicago’s research provides evidence for what we have known all along – that the Diploma Programme prepares students for college success,” Drew Deutsch, Director of the IB Americas, said.  “These findings have important implications for districts across the US interested in implementing IB programmes.  We hope that this study will help policymakers and practitioners better understand how to successfully promote college readiness in high schools.”

The report authors note that “never before in our work in Chicago have we seen coursework have an effect on college persistence.  The fact that it has an effect two years after students graduate speaks to the kind of powerful impact the IB Diploma Programme can have on students’ trajectories”  Indeed, there is considerable cause for optimism about the power of the IB experience to prepare students with the skills necessary to thrive in college.

This study is part of the Chicago Postsecondary Transition project, a multi-year research project tracking the post-high school experiences of successive cohorts of graduating CPS seniors.

The complete study, and others on the impact of the IB programmes, can be downloaded at: http://www.ibo.org/research/policy/programmevalidation/diploma/.

About the International Baccalaureate
The International Baccalaureate is a not-for-profit foundation, which offers four high quality and challenging educational programmes for a worldwide community of schools. For over 40 years, IB programmes have gained a reputation for their high academic standards, for preparing students for life in a globalised 21st century, and for helping to develop the citizens who will create a better, more peaceful world. The IB currently works with over 3,353 schools in 141 countries. To learn more, please visit www.ibo.org/iba.

The IB Diploma Programme is designed as an academically challenging and balanced programme of education with final examinations that prepares students, normally aged 16 to 19, for success at university and life beyond. The programme is normally taught over two years and has gained recognition and respect from the world's leading universities.