Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin today
launched Serve Fresno, a new community engagement project calling
residents to service and challenging them to volunteer 1 million hours
annually to improve our communities in the city and county of Fresno and
make our area the #1 volunteering community in California.
The mayor is launching Serve Fresno because “while government has an important role to play in meeting the many challenges that are before us, we will not fully succeed and become the great city that we’re destined to be without the active participation of each of us. We’re going to need to have each and every person in our City play a part in helping us through these hard times. That’s where our volunteers come in to help us live up to our true promise.” Click here for the Mayor's Full Remarks
The mayor was joined in her call to action by David Galasso, Central
California Region President of Wells Fargo, whose corporate sponsorship
and active volunteer support in more than 100 Central Valley branches
has made Serve Fresno possible.
The kickoff recruiting effort for the 1
Million Hour Challenge begins with special public service programming by
HandsOn Central California on CBS 47 on April 20.
It will include special stories throughout the local KGPE 4:30
p.m. newscast, runs through their local news cycle and concludes with
the 1 Million Hour Kickoff Volunteer-a-thon at 6:30 p.m. in the regular
Deal or No Deal time slot where people can call in, ask questions, learn
more, identify volunteering opportunities, and pledge volunteer hours.
The mayor has designated HandsOn Central California as the coordinating
volunteer hub for this effort, using its skills, staff and systems to
identify volunteering opportunities, to recruit volunteers, and to
inspire, equip and mobilize the entire effort.
The goal for Hands On, says Caples, “is to make it easier for residents
to volunteer at places that interest them, that work with their
schedule, and that make a difference for our community.
It is often the smallest volunteer act that enables the most
meaningful change.”
“Just think,” says
Caples, “the difference two million hours of meaningful community
service every year can make.”
The model for this type of “Call to
Volunteerism” began in New York City with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s
announcement launching NYC Service in April 2009.
In the Mayor's State of the City address Bloomberg called on New
York City to lead the way in answering President Obama's nationwide call
to service.
NYC Service
was designed to
achieve three main goals: making New York City the easiest place
in the world to volunteer, targeting volunteers to address the city’s
greatest needs, and promoting service as a core part of what it means to
be a citizen of the Big Apple.
In California, Sacramento took up the
banner and launched Volunteer
Sacramento in the spring of 2009 with a challenge from Mayor Kevin
Johnson in partnership with HandsOn Sacramento, for every resident to
donate a minimum of 10 hours in 2009.
They surpassed that goal by logging a total of 1.7 million hours
of community service in 2009.
Mayor Swearengin believes that by inspiring, equipping and mobilizing local residents to volunteer and take action to improve their communities we can achieve one million volunteer hours, match CSUF students and faculty, and deliver a total of two million community benefit hours by the end of 2011. This, says Swearengin, will not only let us help ourselves at an unprecedented level, but can also move Fresno into the top tier of mid-sized cities for resident volunteers in the 2012 Volunteering in America Survey by 2012 and make Fresno a nationally recognized City of Service.
