The Volunteers in Public Schools (VIPS) will have its #VIPSPROUD Week from November 1st to November 4th to appreciate their volunteers and partners. The students of Southern University and Louisiana State University will have the chance to join the program while taking pictures with the program’s t-shirts and name badges to post on social media tagging VIPS. VIPS on SU’s and LSU’s campus on Wednesday, November 2, will be organizing a “flash mob”. VIPS also will be passing out buttons with life-sized social media frames for pictures to encourage posts with #VIPSPROUD.
According to Volunteer Director Kaia Simmons, VIPS is an independent non-profit organization that mentors students in grades Kindergarten to the 3rd, whom may fall behind in reading and math courses. The programs under to accommodate those students need are “Everybody Counts” and “Everybody Reads.” The programs goals are to match each teacher’s referred student with a community volunteers, in hopes of improving he or she’s performance in school. Simmons said that even though they have over 500 volunteers in VIPS, there are still a close estimate of over a hundred and fifty students in the program unmatched.
“The need for volunteers is strong. We appeal to students, community partners such as business that may want to help these kids, retired teachers or whoever may have a passion for math and reading,” said Simmons.
Simmons says that is the requirement for joining the VIPS team and in registering, visit www.VIPSBR.org to fill out the application along with a forty-five minute training. Once an applicant goes through that process, he or she is ready to be match with a student. The now volunteer will then sit with the student at the school he or she attends for a minimum thirty minutes per week. Volunteers will have access to a schedule to know when the student will be available in order to work around it.
VIPS has been around since 1981, where they started with an integration project to bus students from unprivileged areas to attend schools in areas that offered or in access of a better education. Simmons said that VIPS is looking to increase their visibility with the help of student involvement through SU.
“We want to be sure that the student know that VIPS is an accredited site for volunteer hours or service learning. Especially with the minimum just being thirty minutes a week. I think that it is very reasonable. We will work around your schedule. We do stress that you be committed and dedicated because some of these students have already been through a lot,” said Simmons.
For more information on VIPS, visit their website or simply attend their event on November 2 during pretty Wednesday.
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Grooming the future: V.I.P.S Reach Out
October 25, 2016
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