Help ShareFest find tutors

We’re looking for people who want to volunteer as tutors at Avalon High School in Wilmington, and you can help us. Download the flier above and pass it on, or if you want to volunteer, e-mail our program director, Anwar, or find out more info here.

Save the Date: 5.1.10 Workday

May 1st, 2010

Save the Date for ShareFest’s 7th Annual Workday. Please anticipate joining us that day. More details to come …

Year-round YDA can change Avalon students’ lives

José Godoy, a senior at Avalon Continuation High School walked to the middle of his tiny, two-building campus where eighty percent of students qualify for free and reduced-price lunches because of their families’ financial state.

Standing on the damp asphalt of the quad, he grinned and slammed a padded striker against a hand-held gong again and again for 10 seconds. A cheer went up from the whole school — the 120 students eating lunch around him.

“When they finish a class, we bang the gong once, and when they graduate, we let them hit the gong as much as they want,” principal Regina Awtry said.

Awtry is the principal of Avalon, a continuation school in Wilmington. the school is situated across Avalon Boulevard from Banning High School, the only major high school in the city.

“Avalon is where students go when they fail at Banning,” Awtry said.

This February, after a successful pilot program, ShareFest is starting its year-round Youth Development Academy at Avalon. We have adapted our summer program to fit the needs of Avalon, and it promises to be a life-changing experience.

Avalon is the ideal location for ShareFest to start its year-round Youth Development Academy because it will have a pointed impact on students in Wilmington. It focuses on a small group where the effect of tutoring and life training will be readily apparent.

Students have already committed to getting their lives on track by attending Avalon, and the first step is helping them graduate. Through one-on-one tutoring in a larger class, ShareFest volunteers will help teach English and basic algebra and geometry to prepare students for the California High School Exit Examination. The tutoring will help ensure more students can bang that gong, but that’s just the start.

“Education isn’t just academics. It’s life-skills and character-building. It’s interwoven, and if we truly are preparing our young people to be the future leaders and the future citizens, it’s more than just book-work,” Awtry said.

In addition to tutoring, ShareFest is putting every youth resource and partnership we have into motion:

• Path4Teens is the life-skills and leadership program students attended at the summer YDA, and now it’s coming to Avalon. It is fun and interactive training designed to equip teenagers with a positive and practical foundation for developing a set of life-skills that facilitate healthy and productive decision-making.
• Hands on Art is another carryover from the summer YDA and will teach five art projects this year. Each project consists of an art lesson, a hands on project inspired by a particular art style or artist and a presentation from students to their piers.
• JustOne will offer a community development program to communicate the importance of caring for our surrounding communities while instilling the values of compassion, love, and relief. Students will get the chance to put this into action by participating in two JustOne initiatives: A Trashcan Can Make a Difference and the Laundry Love Project.
• A Financial Literacy Program will help students become financially aware by covering topics such as budgeting, credit cards, buying a home, cars and loans, saving and investing, and more.
• Lifetime Fitness, a course offered by Cal State Dominguez Hills, is specifically designed to fit the needs of the students at Avalon High School and will teach students how to develop a lifetime of physical activity and healthy eating habits that foster better health. Students will also earn 3 units of transferable college credit.

“We want to give these students every chance possible to succeed,” Anwar Shariff, the YDA Program Director, said. “It’s starts in the classroom, but it ends with creating leaders who can build a purposeful life and healthy community.”

ShareFest needs tutors from 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, February 1- March 12, 2010. If you would like to volunteer, please contact Anwar Shariff at Anwar@ShareFestinc.org.

If you would like to support ShareFest and the students at Avalon, please consider donating here.

Or see below to hear about one student’s experience in our pilot program.

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Avalon High School Christmas Tree Delivery

18-year-old Dariana had helped decorate her classroom door the whole morning, and when she stood in front of the painting of the Grinch stealing Christmas, she had a permanent smile stretched across her face.

At her school, Avalon Continuation High School in Wilmington, the Grinch hadn’t come. Instead, seven volunteers from King’s Harbor Church came to deliver Christmas trees to students’ families in need.

Dariana stands in front of her class' entry in Avalon's Christmas door competition.

“It means a lot because a lot of people right now can’t buy a tree,” Dariana said.

At Avalon, the site of ShareFest’s year-round Youth Development Academy, 80 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches because of their families’ financial situation. Aware of this, the state of the economy and the holidays quickly approaching, Principal Regina Awtry knew she had students at her school whose families couldn’t afford a tree. When ShareFest approached her with the idea of donating trees, she jumped at it.

“The intrinsic value, I can’t even express,” Awtry, said. “When our kids are the recipients of people’s kindness and generosity, then it is my hope and it is my expectation for our kids that some day they will be in the position that they’ll be able to do the same for someone else. We plant the seeds in the kids that communities help each other out.”

On Dec. 11, Awtry’s voice flooded through the loudspeaker, filling the two-building campus before the scheduled  lunch-time and announcing the arrival of their guests. Avalon’s 120 students hurried out of class when they heard ShareFest volunteers had brought donuts for each of them and Christmas trees for those who needed them.

Volunteers cut and load the trees on their way to Avalon.

In the spirit of ShareFest, the volunteers delivering the trees weren’t willing to drop their gifts and leave. They wanted a chance to interact with the students.

“The trees were just an in-road to get to communicate to these kids and encourage them, hope to inspire them and ultimately bless them,” Todd Pearson from King’s Harbor said.

It was a gesture of generosity the future leaders at Avalon are already learning to imitate with a canned food drive ending Wednesday. They are already becoming leaders in a community of care and passing on what they can to those in need.

“It’s the Christmas spirit, and it’s lovely,” Ana, an 11th grade student, said.

Click here to see more photos.

Workday 2009 video

Attendees at ShareFest’s Sixth Annual Evening of Community Fundraiser got the first glimpse of our 2009 Workday video, but now it’s online for all to see.

Pass it along, especially to any of our generous volunteers.