Serving the Ulster County Community

Serving as a bridge, facilitator and organizing agent between a host of community services, religious organizations, service clubs and government agencies, UlsterCorps has helped to advance programs that a single agency may not have sufficient resources to handle on their own:

HARVESTING A LIFETIME Living History Project
Launched Memorial Day Weekend, 2009

The “Harvesting a Lifetime Living History Project,” is a collaborative, countywide inter-generational oral history project engaging volunteers, from high school age on up, to interview and record the treasured memories, stories and history of seniors from our Ulster County community. UlsterCorps brought together 39 different volunteer interviewers and videographers to interview 47 people at 10 sites around the county. Interviews were held at community centers, churches, synagogues, nursing homes and senior centers in locations throughout the county. Copies of the interviews will be given to the “storyteller’s” family or other designated parties. Many interviewees have also chosen to have their conversations uploaded to the UlsterCorps website to begin building a Virtual Archive of Ulster County’s Living History. UlsterCorps collaborated with Jewish Family Services of Ulster County, Everette Hodge Community Center, Golden Hill Health Care Center, LGBTQ Center, Marbletown Community Center, Multi-County Community Development, New Paltz Jewish Community Center, New Progressive Baptist Church,Office for the Aging Lunch Together Program at the Trudy Resnick Farber Building, Ellenville and Rosendale Recreation Center, Pine Hill Community Center, Reformed Church of New Paltz, Temple Emanuel Reform Synagogue, The Queens Galley.

HARVESTING A LIFETIME Summer Youth Workshop
July 6th-August 14th

UlsterCorps expanded Harvesting a Lifetime to include a youth media training program at the Seven21 Media Center in mid-town Kingston. From July 6th-August 14th UlsterCorps will be employing five youth through the Summer Youth Employment Program. The program creates a learning experience in a professional work environment, where youth gain media production and technology skills, as well as workforce skills. UlsterCorps organized volunteer videographers and teachers to train youth in media, editing, interviewing and job-readiness skills working with existing Harvesting a Lifetime footage and interviewing additional seniors. UlsterCorps collaborated with Office of Employment & Training Summer Youth Employment Program, Family of Woodstock’s JustConnect Teen Outreach Program, Second Chance4Me, Seven21 Media Center.

ULSTER COUNTY HUNGER PREVENTION COALITION
UlsterCorps is a member of the Ulster County Hunger Prevention Coalition, bringing together local workers and volunteers from Community Gardens and Farms, Gleaners, Processors, Storage Facilities, Food Pantries and Soup Kitchens to help make the connections that will feed more people in our communities. Farmers are generously offering to donate fresh produce but need help getting it to those in need. UlsterCorps is responsible for building a corps of volunteers to assist in growing, gleaning, processing and transporting food from local farms to local food pantries and soup kitchens and recruited and organized volunteers for five farm-based events this fall which brought over 4000lbs of fresh apples and corn, 750qts of apples sauce and 50 gallons of cider to 19 local pantries and soup kitchens. Farms to Food Pantries is a seasonal fall project in collaboration with Mohonk Consultations, Family of Woodstock, Woodcrest Community, The Queens Galley, Cornell Cooperative Extension, RVGA and other local farms and food pantries.

CELEBRATION OF SERVICE QUILT
The mission of the Quilt project is to recognize and remember those who have volunteered, to educate about the importance of service, and to inspire others to become more involved. One of our main goals is to engage both long-term quilters and young people in the process, fostering inter-generational discourse through a collaborative art project. The Quilt will travel and grow as more and more people contribute their stories. A virtual version will also be displayed on our website. People will also be able to submit stories of service online, which will be printed and transferred to fabric.

UNIVERSAL VOLUNTEER WORKSHOPS
UlsterCorps is working in collaboration with the Red Cross and United Way to develop a “Universal Volunteer” program to keep volunteers engaged and active and support agencies with volunteer training. The goal of the initiative is to create a pool of trained volunteers available to the agencies as their needs ebb and flow. The Universal Volunteer project will also design and deliver a training program covering the required orientation and core curriculum for new volunteers. This frees up the agency to focus on the specialized skills they individually require. UlsterCorps’ role is to support the program with volunteers, assess agency needs, and recruit interested agencies.

YLDI Participatory Citizenship Project
The Youth Leadership Development Institute’s Participatory Citizenship Project offers twenty-five eleventh graders from public, private, and home schools located throughout Ulster County an empowerment opportunity to develop life connections that will not only assist them in their career development but will also increase their civic leadership knowledge and commitments. The Institute seeks to bring youth training and access into leadership and decision-making roles necessary for participatory citizenship within their own communities. UlsterCorps is committed to supporting youth involvement in the community and in its organization. We are currently mentoring two students from Rondout Valley High School. They are actively involved on our Steering Committee planning and organizing our first fundraising event.

ULSTERCORPS IN ACTION: “PROJECT COATS”
“Project Coats,” grew from an UlsterCorps Facebook posting where an individual wrote that she knew of 800 brand new youth winter coats in NJ that could be available for donation, but didn’t know how to pick them up or where to donate them. UlsterCorps was able to coordinate this donation, finding 10 volunteers with strong arms and/or large vehicles to drive to NJ to pick up the coats and distribute them to agencies throughout the county that indicated an interest in receiving them: Family of Woodstock, Rural & Migrant Ministry, Harbor Program of MHA in Ulster, River Haven, and the Saugerties & Kingston Boys & Girls Clubs. This effort took hours of administrative coordination work. UlsterCorps was pleased to take on this task, saving the agencies from having to utilize their own resources to coordinate this donation. The quantity of 800 coats would likely have been too large for one service agency to handle, so by working together through UlsterCorps, many agencies and youth were beneficiaries during this cold, long winter season.

NATIONAL SERVICE DAY
UlsterCorps was launched in January 2009, just in time to respond to the call to service on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Despite the short time to prepare for the event (about ten days!), UlsterCorps was able to quickly invite agencies to host service events and open houses and encourage volunteer involvement throughout the county. UlsterCorps matched 102 new volunteers to a service agency around “National Service Day” throughout the county at places like the Queens Galley Soup Kitchen, Big Brothers/Big Sisters Ulster County, the Ulster County Red Cross, Sustainable Hudson Valley, Ulster Literacy Association, and the USPCA.