1stSaturdays.com

What

1st Saturdays.com promotes the first Saturday of each month as the official monthly volunteer/recruitment day at school sites.

We believe these projects can improve a school one month at a time, while growing school-based organizations.

This vision is called Familyhood.

1st Saturdays is the “do now” strategy to advance a school towards the long-term goal of building Familyhood.

Familyhood is driven by two mottoes: 1 – “every school shall have a functioning Student Government Association, Parent Teacher Association and Alumni Association.”

In essence, these organizations along with community partners or Friends of the school’s make up a school’s Familyhood.

Motto 2 – ” Every school shall have a garden, a farmers market and a grocery store.”

In essence, these school -based enterprises improve the communities food system, while giving the students hands-on work experience/ leadership skills and the opportunity to work with others to improve their school and their surrounding community.

Why

Year’s ago, we held a MLK Day of Service volunteer day at Castlemont high school.

We did an amazing job clearing out the weeds, planting seeds, etc, all in few hours.

However, when I returned to the garden about a month later I could see that many of the weeds had returned.

From that moment forward, I thought, we needed more than one volunteer event a year to enable these projects to serve the community and these types of projects tio recruit members from the community to participate.

Fortunately, at Castlemont High school, the science teacher adopted the school garden and was able to incorporate the school garden within her curriculum.

But if the science teacher did not adopt the garden, what would had become of the school garden?

Why 1stSaturday?

After the MLK Day of Service volunteer day, many of the volunteers shared a sense of accomplishment and appreciation to have met so many people volunteering in the school garden.

The 1st Saturday of every month is fairly easy to remember and gives volunteers enough of a break in between to be excited to come out once a month to meet cool people, while improving their schools and their surrounding community.