Yellowstone Youth Doing Acts of Kindness

YELLOWSTONE YOUTH DOING ACTS OF KINDNESS (Y2DAK)
Serving Communities at Home and Abroad

Created in the spring of 2013, Y2DAK is based in Gardiner, Montana. The goal is to engage youth in grades 7-12 in service opportunities locally and abroad.

Youth choose local volunteer service projects to work on throughout the year. A minimum of 10 volunteer hours a year is required, but more is encouraged. Gardiner is a small, isolated, rural town of 800 people that sits at the north entrance of Yellowstone National Park. This winter, youth have spent many hours shoveling snow and breaking up ice to keep the main sidewalks in town clear and safe for pedestrians.

The focus of Y2DAK is to foster good citizenship and promote global awareness in Gardiner's youth. Our town has little diversity, culturally or economically, so every 2 years Y2DAK plans to arrange a service project in a developing country for the youth who have completed the required local community service hours. This will take the youth out of their comfort zone and immerse them in a life that is very different from the one they are growing up in. It will help them improve their Spanish skills. And by volunteering they will be "giving back" instead of just vacationing. In March we will travel to Antigua, Guatemala to volunteer with forgotten and mistreated animals in an animal shelter run by a local Guatemalan Animal Rights organization. The youth and chaperones will be living with local Guatemalan families. This is organized through International Volunteer Headquarters (IVHQ).

We are seeking funding to offset the cost of travel to Guatemala, IVHQ program coordination fees, and contributing monetarily to the animal shelter. Let us thank you in advance for your support!