Last chance to sign up to volunteer at the 5k this weekend

[Melanie Schmidt]

***Last Chance- Sign up by 5pm Today***

Join WeChangeLA as we volunteer at:

Virginia Avenue Project's (VAP)
5k Race for Kids and the Arts
Lake Balboa, CA
Sunday, May 31st, 6am-11am

If I told you that you could help Change the life of a kid in LA in the time it takes to hand someone a glass of water, wouldn't you do it? 

Well, you can, if you join us on May 31st. The Virginia Avenue Project (VAP), a great organization that Changes the lives of dozens of kids, is having a 5k race as a fundraiser and WeChangeLA has been asked to help them out. Don't worry, you don't have to run a step!  We will be doing things like helping runners with sign-in and registration, handing them water along the course, and handing out goodie bags as they complete the race. It will be easy, fun, and we will get to work together and meet some new folks as well.

I've been volunteering at VAP one day a week for the last 4 years. It is a free after-school arts and academics program that is based in the Santa Monica/ Venice area. They use the theater arts to keep kids engaged in learning. They write plays that are produced by grownup actors, act in plays that grownups write for them, and collaborate on performances. Kids involved at VAP can also participate in a free mentoring program, and that is how I got involved with them. Long before I had the WeChangeLA community, when I first moved to Los Angeles, I became a volunteer mentor in the afterschool program. For the past 4 years, I have had the same child as my "SmartPartner" and over the years she and I have learned, grown, and blossomed together. She was only 9 when we started working together, but now she is starting High School in the fall, and she has chosen to keep learning at a time when many kids who struggle in school decide to give up. I know from seeing the process repeated by at least a dozen other kids in our afterschool group that this is a choice that the VAP helps all its participants to make. 100 percent of VAP kids finish high school, and nearly all go on to higher education.

I hope that you will join us in spite of the early hour. As 4-year volunteer for the VAP, I know they make a huge difference in the lives of kids who otherwise could not afford the one-on-one tutoring, lessons, and after school programs that the VAP offers. Many WeChangeLA members have expressed a desire to volunteer in a way that helps kids. This event is a way to do just that in only a few hours, and so I hope you will join me and the other members of WeChangeLA at this event.

Please RSVP by clicking the link below:
RSVP for Ready, Set....ChangeLA!

We'll follow up with info about where to meet the WeChangeLA team after you RSVP.

Let's Change LA... Together,
Melanie