servehere summer 2016 kick-off

This week we kicked off another season of ServeHere with an intensive, two day orientation session designed to prepare our students for a successful summer and life after college.
​After a very competitive recruiting process during the spring, 13 students were selected to participate in this summer’s program. The Summer 2016 class hails from the University of Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Concordia and Valparaiso. There is a strong concentration of business majors this time, but we have engineering, communications and education majors as well.
A summer with ServeHere provides many learning opportunities, with the most important being the student’s carefully selected internship placement with a local non-profit. This is their new classroom and a place where they are challenged to apply what they have learned in their field of study in order to make a real impact.
This summer, internship placements were made in eleven different faith-based non-profits around Austin. Virtually all of these organizations serve populations that struggle with deep poverty. But their clients’ circumstances, are very different — spanning the homeless, underprivileged youth, refugees, juvenile offenders, recent convicts, villagers in Africa and the Dominican Republic, young mothers and more.
Our Summer 2016 Non-profit Partners

• Chicon Pregnancy Resource Center – helping new and expectant mothers in East Austin
• Makarios – providing education and community outreach in the Dominican Republic
• Mission Possible – impacting East Austin thru Youth, Street and Outreach ministries
• Mobile Loaves and Fishes – lifting up Austin’s homeless population
• Nineveh Ministries – mentoring juvenile offenders and restoring hope
• Partners in Hope – connecting Lakeway families with physical, emotional and spiritual support
• RBI Austin – changing lives of urban youth thru baseball, softball and mentoring
• Side-by-Side Kids – equipping inner city children thru afterschool programs
• Texas Reach Out – providing post-prison transitional housing and support
• Thrivent Financial – F500 non-profit connecting faith and finances
• Water to Thrive – bringing life-giving water wells to Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda

Previous summers have proven that the work our students do inside these organizations is both interesting and valuable. They are given more responsibility than students in traditional internship roles.  While they are developing job programs, micro-enterprise programs, after-school curriculum, engineering best practices, marketing plans, and telling the stories of the organizations and the people they serve — they are also sharing the love of Christ.
Our two day kick-off session gave our students a chance to meet each other, learn from inspirational guest speakers, participate in workshops, and reflect on their goals for this summer.  Already it is clear that this is a very engaging group of young adults who are motivated to live a life of significance!