Volunteer Center South Bay Harbor Long Beach

COURT REFERRAL COMMUNITY SERVICE PROGRAM Part of the California League of Alternate Service (CRCS) Programs, the Volunteer Center's Court Referral Community Service Program provides assistance to thousands of clients annually who are given community service by the courts as an alternative sentence. CRCS staff works with eligible nonprofits in the community to help court volunteers complete their service. CRCS staff also coordinates participation in the Hospital and Morgue (HAM) Program and Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) Victim Impact Panels to help build awareness and empathy for people with specific offenses. This ensures that court volunteers can maintain their employment, education and other positive influences while completing their community service.

FOOD FOR KIDS Food For Kids is the Volunteer Centers volunteer and donation-driven food pantry that provides bags of non-perishable food and health-related inserts to low-income elementary school students at partner schools each week. Volunteers sort, pack and deliver bags of food filled with enough items to make two breakfasts, two lunches and two dinners for a family of four to the schools every Friday. The schools identify families with the greatest need, and those students take the bags home to share over the weekend.

YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH Evidence-based community prevention programs that help students connect with peers in an informal non-profit or youth program setting are not easily accessible locally. Teens asked for a safe, neutral space in which they could learn to better balance their lives, and learn to identify and express emotions in healthy ways. They loved the idea of a program that would teach them resiliency skills, and help them be kinder and gentler with both themselves and others.In response, the Volunteer Center has worked closely with families and mental health professionals to reimagine its popular teen program, now renamed Connect. Connect is designed to be an accessible program framework to bring helpful coping tools and proven techniques to teens in their own, non-medical environment. The program will help teens with:Strength and value identificationSelf-acceptanceGroup sharing and belongingEmotional intelligenceCoping skillsConnect also addresses the concern that students, parents and community leaders share around the excessive use of disconnection vices such as screen time and its impact on emotions, sleep and feelings of isolation. While designed ultimately to be a prevention and early intervention program, the Volunteer Center has hired a certified mental health professional (LPCC) to create specific lesson plans and presents six Connect calls, (five for teens and one for parent/caregivers) during the pilot.