Project Examples

The Mother House Fund grant helped the 826Seattle’s Youth Advisory Board to create and sell t-shirts, and to print promotional materials, for a fundraiser. Over $1000 was raised, and is currently being used as seed money to inspire another donor to fund the remainder of funds needed for a second student mentor.  

“We are certain that last year’s Mother House Fund grant will continue to raise crucial funds for the student mentor position and that the Youth Advisory Board will create a new fundraising project with the experience we gained from last year’s project.”
“We contributed to the overwhelming financial success of the 826Seattle event by inspiring guests with our memoir project.”

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This year’s event broke the record for participation with over 80 people in attendance. The Youth Advisory Board also had great success in getting more organizations involved in the event by getting the climbing gym at a discounted rental fee, donated food and and prizes and contributions from many local businesses. The event helped to raise $5000.  

“Being around people who are different helps an individual see how they, themselves, are unique. It also helps a person appreciate the unique people that are a part of Passages. It must have taken lots of courage for everyone at the event to be able to interact with people they didn’t know, along with telling how an individual feels about Passages and how Passages helped to make them who they are.”

“During one climb, a mother and her child were climbing next to each other. The girl was involved with Passages’ after-school program, however the mother had never climbed before. As the mother and child climbed, the room filled up with excitement. The mother and child kept climbing and climbing until finally, they reached the top and gave each other a high-five. It was the most heart-touching sight to see.”

“The courage it takes to overcome challenges has to be very intense and strong because in life there are struggles and people who do not want to see us succeed, but there has to be courage in order to surpass these struggles.”

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  “Acting Our Age” produced videos for the annual auction, and is now looking to do various street theater performances and filming performances to put them on various websites. The issues addressed by “Acting Our Age” include sexual harassment, police brutality, racial profiling in schools and homophobia.  The work of “Acting Our Age” has helped to bring awareness to these issues, and the performances will continue throughout 2009 to bring awareness of these issues to the community-at-large. 

“We’ve learned a lot about the value of working together and sticking together as a group; hearing both positive and critical feedback; we’ve learned how to facilitate meetings and share facilitation; we’ve learned that small improv-style street theater is a better fit for us and our personal lives than bigger traditional plays. I’ve also learned more about leadership, and that this has to be our project, not just my project, because I want Acting Our Age to belong to all of the members.”

“We really do care about sharing community issues with other youth through youth-led performances, and it was really hard and discouraging when our project collapsed for a few months. But I knew we were going to start back up again because I'm passionate about this project. We just had to face some issues in our lives and families, and we had to get better at working together. But now we are here, taking our project in a new direction of street theatre, and our meetings feel really fun and productive.”

Acting Our Age created 3 "public service announcements." Click the Play button to view one of them.

Acting Our Age's PSA shows SYPP members protesting the November 1999 WTO in Seattle, helping to share this event with youth almost ten years later

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The Showcase provides a positive, safe, supportive and overall friendly space for people with vast cultural, racial, religious, age and socio-economic differences to come together as human beings for a night of all-ages entertainment, while raising funds and awareness for The Service Board.  The event helped to raise $1000.

“I feel that young people who were touched by this project were able to see that they too can do anything they put their minds to, while helping others in the community simultaneously.”
“At one point in the evening a Showcase participant remarked ‘I’m ready to do another one! All of the hard work was worth it. I never thought I could start something and finish it, from beginning to end. I did it. I am ready for more. Thank you so much for the opportunity.’”

As a result of her work in high school, Nandie Oosthuizen served as one of the 5 panel members, along with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, for the “Compassion in Action” event at Seeds of Compassion, April, 2008. The purpose of the event was to have a dialogue about how we can motivate young people to take action and live compassionately. It is here that Nandie spoke about the need for more support for our young social entrepreneurs, and as a result has encouraged several new organizations to focus on empowering youth philanthropists. Last year, Nandie was able to start her second venture, which has now officially grown into an established registered charitable organization called Hand & Heart.