Today, Mayor Jim Suttle and the City’s Chief Service Officer Kirsten Case launched Omaha Serves at Benson Park Pavilion, joined by many of the partners involved with the initiative.
The city of Omaha celebrates community service with Omaha Serves, a program designed to mobilize and channel volunteerism in the city. Omaha Serves promotes “Impact Volunteering,” or strategies that target community needs, use best practices and set clear goals to measure progress. The Omaha Serves program is supported by private funding and generous community partners, not taxpayer funding.
The goals of the program are to implement a plan for service within the community and to engage and challenge citizens to volunteer and celebrate their efforts. Omaha Serves will call on all citizens, no matter their age, socioeconomic status or physical abilities, to do their part in making Omaha a better place to live, work and play.
Download the Omaha Serves Plan
Download a Summary of Omaha Serves
“Omaha Serves will build a stronger city through neighbors helping neighbors,” Mayor Jim Suttle said. “With this program, we hope to engage people of all ages from all backgrounds and encourage involvement from young people to instill in them the value of serving their community.”
Omaha was selected as one of 10 cities to receive a two-year Cities of Service Leadership Grant to implement Omaha Serves. Spearheading the program is Kirsten Case, the city’s Chief Service Officer who began work in March 2010. The position is funded solely by the grant.
Case’s first task was to develop initiatives targeting the community’s priority areas. These initiatives include:
• Increasing the number of positive adult role models in the lives of youth
• Providing job and life-skills training for youth
• Advancing neighbor participation in neighborhood restoration projects
• Recruiting skilled, long-term and diverse volunteers
Case will secure the resources necessary for the program’s success via grants, sponsorships and private donations.
By mobilizing community partners and volunteers to areas of the city in need, Case hopes to bring together the people of Omaha, not only within their own individual neighborhoods but also as part of a single, unified community where service knows no boundaries.
“Whether it’s a neighborhood beautification project, an effort to improve education or health, or just neighbors helping each other, everyone can get involved,” Case said. “Every person in Omaha has a skill or talent that can contribute to Omaha Serves. We want to better connect citizens to the diverse needs in our community and to promote service as a core part of what it means to be an Omahan, as well as an American.”
Omaha Serves is supported by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Cities of Service Program .
