This month’s gratification post is to our entire Volunteer Community! Each month we thank an individual, business and/or organization who supports our efforts but this month we would like to extend an extra thank you to all of our amazing volunteers! We could not achieve our holiday themed events, execute our fundraisers, or run the programs we offer to our after-school members without them! As a thank you, we gifted a small candle with the message “Thank you and Happy Holidays from the MYC” to all of our volunteers this month!
With the help of over 65 volunteers for this school year alone, volunteering over 370 hours, the Milford Youth Center has been able to successfully accomplish some of the following: make important decisions for the sustainability and future of the Center at monthly Youth Commission meetings, have the ability to write more grants to expand programming, host a fundraiser with 50 raffle items, put on an amazing haunted maze and community Halloween event, provide a Thanksgiving meal that fed over 115 children, conduct a Holiday Gift collection that helped over 130 children and their families, run countless after school programs including knitting, book club, fishing, gardening, arts and crafts, and finally provide multiple food access programs for our members and community! The Milford Youth Center would not have the opportunity to do all these things without the help of our volunteers. To help put their impact into perspective, the hours volunteered are equivalent to over $11,000 in saved staffing expenses, according to the Independent Sector! The generosity, trust, companionship, learning, and friendships are all things that are earned not by the dollar but by the lives that our volunteers touch daily here at the Youth Center. We welcome you; we appreciate you, and we encourage you to continue to make a difference in the lives of youth, but also in the lives of the Youth Center staff. Without you, we would not be able to achieve all the things we have and plan to do in the future. You are appreciated!