It was late last year when I first heard of UpLift Austin (UA) – I was immediately excited about the alignment between my professional work and this non-profit’s mission. I recently had the opportunity to meet and speak with their founder, Gina LaMotte, about the organization and some opportunities for skills-based volunteerism that may interest you.

UA has adopted the mission to educate and lead youth on sustainable design through the real-life renovation of their own schools; transforming low-performing public schools into sites of unexpected color, spirit and opportunity. 

UA’s strategy is to utilize TAKS-required lessons in science, math, government, and economics and integrate them with lessons on environmental stewardship and career readiness in a project-based, service format. Participation in the program helps students build green career paths out of poverty while simultaneously creating inspiring learning spaces and promoting the health of students, staff and planet.

The most compelling components of the program, for me, center on the interdiscplinary approach and how students become the leaders through development and presentation of their project proposals, with the best projects selected for implementation.  End to end this appears to be a hands-on and personally-relavent program that engages students at level beyond the traditional teacher-centric classroom.  The opporutnity build relationpships with experienced professionals is a second (and perhaps the most important) layer of frosting on this already super fresh, uber-rich, chocolate-mocha cake of learning goodness.

If you are inspired by UA’s mission, please contact Gina about getting involved. UA has some immediate needs to fill:

• Accountant: create and keep clean budgets & reports for grants
• Web/Graphic Designer: translate sketches into graphic designs, some of which are animated or interactive, to be added to website

• Creating & Maintaining Social Network Pages
• Designing Interesting & Simple Fundraising Initiatives
• Managing Volunteers

Personally, I’m going to work with Gina on establishing a job shadowing program at Dell. Exposing students to the opportunities for environmental stewards in large corporations (i.e. supply chain management, CSR, real estate & facility management) would be a nice complement to the mentoring they will receive directly from UA volunteers primarily from the design professions.