2023-2024 Community Partners
Additional Information
The Junior League of Nashville received 62 partnership requests for the upcoming 2023-2024 league year. Of those, 32 aligned with both focus areas of improving childhood literacy and alleviating poverty, 26 aligned with the focus area of alleviating poverty only, and 4 aligned with improving childhood literacy only.
Each request was reviewed and evaluated by the Grants Committee on the following criteria: 1) alignment with Junior League focus areas and outcomes, and 2) utilization of Junior League volunteers through meaningful and mutually beneficial volunteer opportunities.
The community partnership recommendation of the 2022-2023 Grants Committee, presented to and approved by the Junior League of Nashville Board of Directors is as follows and totals $62,776.
Community Focus Area Partner Agencies:
JNL volunteers can be utilized in furthering the mission of The Aloe Family through volunteering at all weekly programs. During the week, we look for tutors for our afterschool program and for our English Classes to act as positive influences, supporters, and educational supporters. On weekends, we look for volunteers to plan fun activities for Saturday community days, and to pack food boxes to distribute for our Sunday Free Fresh Grocery program.
Book’em $14,000
Volunteers serve in the Reading is Fundamental (RIF) Program and help with many other activities: Processing books, reviewing read-aloud books, serving on Book’em’s book recommendation task force, organizing the book room, researching various topics, picking up books from schools, delivering books to schools, assisting with events, staffing booths, and gift wrapping.
Period Kit Packing Volunteers (10+): Volunteers are needed throughout the year to pack period products into Period Kits. The CRC distributes period products in two kit sizes – a “Grab and Go” kit containing 5 tampons or pads, or a “Monthly” kit containing 20 tampons or pads. This is a flexible volunteer opportunity with in-person and remote opportunities.
Period Product Drive Volunteers (3+): Volunteers are needed to work with the CRC’s Director of Partnership to coordinate and facilitate community-wide period product supply drives.
Mobile Distribution Event Volunteers (10+): In the summer of 2023, the CRC will launch a Mobile Hygiene Pantry program, bringing essential hygiene supplies directly into communities where our neighbors are experiencing hygiene insecurity. The CRC will host a minimum of ten-period product distribution events in 2023 and will require 4-5 volunteers to assist with each event.
Event Committee Volunteers – Dishing Up Dignity Luncheon (3+): The CRC is hosting its first-ever Dishing Up Dignity Luncheon in March 2023 to raise awareness around period poverty in Middle Tennessee and to raise the necessary funds/products needed to provide period supplies to women and girls in our community who cannot afford this essential need.
Volunteers will be utilized during school and summer programs to help with improving childhood literacy:
Summer Program
Reading Buddies
Our Reading Buddies program is designed to allow for individualized learning time for each of our students. Volunteers work with a student for 20 minutes; students will read to the volunteer, and that volunteer will help them with the tough words and play phonics and sight word games together.
Guest Readers
Our Guest Reader program is designed to have role models from the community read to our students. Guest Readers will also talk a little about their job, how they help the community, and why reading is important to them. ENHE can select a book or the Guest Reader can choose a book to read that relates to their theme, “My Family, My Community, My World.”
Field Trips
Volunteers are crucial for a successful field trip. We pair 1-2 volunteers to each classroom (a total of 7) to assist teachers with the passing out of snacks, tour guidance, and lunch. Following field trips, volunteers can assist with our weekly incentive store. Students are given tickets for good behavior throughout the week which they can use to purchase gifts as an intrinsic reward. Volunteers will help with the setting up of store items, as well as assisting students with what they can purchase based on the number of tickets they have.
Family Engagements
This program is designed for students and their family members. Volunteers are needed on these days to help teachers in classrooms with literacy activities while parents are workshopping on a small group lesson with the executive director/staff member.
Pilot School Year Programs
East Nashville Hope Exchange is looking to pilot two new programs during the 2023-2024 school year. The two programs will be an expansion of our Reading Buddies program as well as a rollout of a new program called Lunch Buddies.
For the Reading Buddies Program, a volunteer will come to the school of choice based in our targeted MNPS cluster (Maplewood & Stratford) and spend 30 minutes once or twice a week reading one-on-one and playing phonics games with a student(s).
Our Lunch Buddies Program pairs a professional from the community with a student(s) to eat with in his or her school cafeteria once a week for thirty minutes. This program is meant to foster healthy mentor relationships and allow for positive adult figures in a student’s life.
JLN Volunteers may do the following:
1. Serve as Life Coaches/Mentors (In-School Supports)- Assist group facilitators with prepping for the group, lesson delivery, and mentoring young ladies weekly/bi-weekly or monthly
2. I’m BOSSY Camp Volunteers (this could be in the entrepreneurial capacity, administrative, or extra assistance during camp activities and field trips)
3. Operational Volunteers- assisting with strengthening and advising The F.I.N.D Design Executive Team on Human Resources, Communications, and Marketing
JLN volunteers will distribute life-saving supplies, toiletries and personal items, clothing, and homemade meals to people experiencing homelessness and poverty. On any volunteer day, a volunteer may help an individual find clothing that fits them, pour beverages, pass out meals, assess needs, or distribute information on local resources.
Volunteers are needed to serve on committees to implement Justice Industries’ 2023-2028 Strategic Plan, specifically related to Employee Development as well as other areas of focus including Marketing, Business Development, and Fundraising initiatives. The Board meets every other month, with the expectation that committees meet in between so volunteers are needed to be available for at least six meetings per year.
NBC meets with every class for 20 minutes per week, and volunteers work one-on-one with students throughout the day to find the “right” book. Our volunteers take time to get to know each student and his/her/their reading interests and needs.
Through interviews with teachers, we have learned that that special one-on-one time with a grownup (as a student picks out a book) is invaluable. For some children, time with our NBC volunteers is the only time students get individualized attention from grownups. Additionally, the one-on-time book “shopping” experience at the NBC Carts re-frames the way many students see reading. For struggling readers, books can be intimidating and stress-inducing. However, when students are paired with enthusiastic and compassionate NBC volunteers outside of the classroom, their negative association with books/reading can transform into a positive connection.
The most successful volunteer experience comes when we are able to recruit volunteers who:
1) Enjoy working with K-5th graders,
2) Are able to excite kids about reading, and
3) Appreciate the importance of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging work.
JLN will provide program expansion support for the Diapers for Diplomas program in two ways: (1) increase the program’s reach beyond the students identified currently by the community colleges and/or TN Reconnect navigators; (2) expand the Diapers for Diplomas program into the Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology.
NashDiaper will utilize the team of JLN volunteers to help with increasing the program’s reach and expanding the program into the TCATs by having these volunteers perform the following activities:
1. Evaluate the current D4D Program
2. Collaborate with NashDiaper to host a focus group regarding the Diapers for Diplomas Program
3. Document program stakeholders
4. Increase program awareness
5. Develop and execute the deployment plan for this program at TCAT Nashville
6. Present TCAT Nashville launch plan to Nashville Diaper Connection Board of Directors in October 2023
Renewal House $7,820
In August, Junior League volunteers will host the first in a series of nine dinner events for Renewal House Family Residential Program mothers and children. The Junior League volunteers will join the families for dinner and the crafts activity to engage them in conversation, providing encouragement and support. Junior League volunteers will also be asked to assist with the following activities: the 2023 Fall Festival and the 2024 Spring Fling.
Safe Haven Family Shelter $8,000
Children’s Program volunteer activities vary in times, group size, and date but include:
- Friday Family Fun Nights
- Breakfast with Books: Quarterly initiative to assemble literacy kits and deliver them with breakfast items
- Dancing for Safe Haven and Hike for Safe Haven: Annual events needing support
- Literacy Kit Assembly: Held at different times throughout the year.
JLN volunteers would be utilized in two different capacities: making kits to distribute to our clients experiencing homelessness, and washing, folding, and returning clothes to families in our Handle with Care Program. These activities would align with, at least, Homelessness and Housing and Support for Parents.
Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt
The Junior League of Nashville’s Home for Crippled Children, established in 1923, was the genesis of the Children’s Hospital. The Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt remains one of the most respected pediatric facilities in the country and is dedicated to meeting the unique healthcare needs of children, from newborns to young adults, and their families.
Strategic Partners:
*New this year
A proposed new committee within the Community Council, Community Needs, will allow JLN to maintain or build relationships with community groups and determine how to best utilize each other’s skillsets, therefore, maximizing community change.
AncoraTN (formerly End Slavery Tennessee) $17,956
McNeilly Center $9,000
Nashville Public Library Foundation
National Hook-Up of Black Women
Oasis Center $6,000