Story Tapestries wants to put your skills and interests to work to serve our mission. Our goal is to improve accessibility and equity in educational spaces, and beyond, through the arts.  We have ways that you can volunteer from your home, office or in the community.    In addition, we have the ability to organize a volunteer day at your office.

Why: Story Tapestries has a goal to make sure 10,000+ youth and families as well as older adults have access not only to arts education but also arts activity kits that include not only visual art but musical instruments. Often families experiencing economic hardships do not have the resources to provide art supplies to their children. Often older adults, especially those in isolation also have difficulty in devoting their fixed incomes to buying anything beyond food and yet they need to have the ability to express themselves.

What:
1) Collect art supplies (pencils, paper, journals, crayons, musical instruments, markers, scissors, glue, etc.) into ready to deliver for youth, families, and older adults.
2) Arrange with Story Tapestries for us to come and collect the supplies

Where & When: ANYTIME!!  Children and Adults can always use supplies.  Collect the items at your home, your workplace, or another COVID-safe location.  We coordinate to pick up the supplies and deliver them.

Benefit to You and Your Team: Here is a physical task that not only helps us ensure engagement of the populations we support, but it provides excellent opportunities to take pictures and videos for social media, helping highlight the work we do, how you helped us achieve it, and bringing social capital to both organizations.

Why: Story Tapestries has a goal to make sure 10,000+ youth and families as well as older adults have access not only to arts education but also arts activity kits. Often families experiencing economic hardships do not have the resources to provide school supplies, specifically art supplies to their students. Often older adults, especially those in isolation also have difficulty in devoting their fixed incomes to creative arts supplies.

What:
1) Combine art supplies (pencils, paper, journals sharpeners, erasers, markers, scissors, glue, etc.) into ready to deliver for youth, families, and older adults. Set up the assembly line and go.
2) Safely deliver activity kits to school sites and distribution centers.

Where & When: For assembly, we coordinate with you. Either at your home, your workplace, or another COVID-safe location, we will set up an assembly day where we bring supplies to equal a goal number of kits. For delivery, we coordinate between you and the distribution site to facilitate a safe drop off that helps us complete the supply chain.

Benefit to You and Your Team: Here is a physical task that not only helps us ensure engagement of the populations we support, but it provides excellent opportunities to take pictures and videos for social media, helping highlight the work we do, how you helped us achieve it, and bringing social capital to both organizations.

Why: Inspire the leaders of tomorrow by sharing your personal experiences. Help youth side-step the pitfalls you fell into and give them the tools that have best supported you on your journey.
 
What: Story Tapestries relies on a diverse network of speakers who can share their stories, experiences, and life lessons with the next generation of employees, managers, and entrepreneurs.
 
Where: Online and various in-person locations.
 
When: Many of our programs with youth involves at least one speaker.  We match the interests of the students to the speaker. Specific dates and times are determined based on the program schedule and the speaker’s availability.
 
Benefit to the Employee: We welcome all levels of public speaking expertise. Whether you have the gift of gab or need some encouragement, Story Tapestries can provide you the opportunity, and if needed professional coaching, to help you deliver your message with impact.

Why: Experience the joy of a performance, a workshop or an event and make a lifetime of difference for children and adults.
 
What: Support and assist a Story Tapestries' event as a Tech-Support. For online programs, this means spotlighting key speakers, muting the audience, chat support, breakout room conversationalist, letting attendees in from the waiting room, sharing music and playing a PowerPoint as needed.  You would be the backend of an event support.
 
Where: Online.
 
When: There are ongoing opportunities to support programs year-round. Provide us with your availability (an hour a week, each morning for a week, a one-time performance) and we’ll match the event to your availability!
 
Benefit to the Employee: Based on our programming calendar and your availability, we pair you with an ST teaching artist to help bring smiles and learning to youth and community members. You make a difference by helping youth while gaining valuable insight into how arts integration really works. Witness first-hand how the arts bridge the equity gap so you can be an advocate for change.

Why: Experience the joy of a performance, a workshop or an event and make a lifetime of difference for children and adults.
 
What: Support and assist a Story Tapestries' event as a Tech-Support. For in-person programs, this means potentially helping to set up the event, handing out supplies to the attendees, monitoring check-in, cleaning up after an event and/or the most important job, welcoming people with a smile.  
 
Where: In-person at event sites all over Maryland
 
When: There are ongoing opportunities to support programs year-round. Provide us with your availability (an hour a week, each morning for a week, a one-time performance) and we’ll match the event to your availability!
 
Benefit to the Employee: Based on our programming calendar and your availability, we pair you with an ST teaching artist to help bring smiles and learning to youth and community members. You make a difference by helping youth while gaining valuable insight into how arts integration really works. Witness first-hand how the arts bridge the equity gap so you can be an advocate for change.

Why: Gift your love of reading and kickstart a child’s learning journey. Research shows the more words a young child hears in their formative years, the better we set them up for academic success by boosting reading comprehension, vocabulary and fluency before they start school.

What: Story Tapestries presents a weekly video series on Facebook where adults read or tell their favorite stories from childhood, creating a video library for parents to enjoy and share with their children.

Where: We seek amazing people like YOU to present poems, picture books or stories, folktales, or family favorites for our weekly Facebook live video series.

When: Every Wednesday, Story Tapestries presents the Magical World of Words at 9 am, 12 pm, 3 pm, and 6 pm ET.  We prefer the readings to be live, but you can opt to pre-record the story beforehand.

Benefit to the Employee: Enjoy sharing your voice through a 5-15 minute story or poem and give children the joy of being read to. Your love of reading can reach 1,000+ per week with Facebook live streaming performances.

Why: After 10 years of growth as a non-profit, Story Tapestries has now implemented the CRM tool Salesforce to support contact and donor management. Solid data management means maximum transparency and efficiency in responding to the needs of our stakeholders, and buys us time to do more of what we do best!
 
What: We need skilled data managers who can support our newly implemented Salesforce and G Suite systems as we continue to migrate data from our legacy systems.
 
Where & When: Online and as needed. If you have knowledge to share with our team, we can organize training times based on your availability.
 
Benefit to the Employee: Teach your keen business and technology skills to very grateful arts administrators. Improve your communication and professional development skills working with learners who are appreciative of your time and expertise.

Why: Spread the word about our good works on social media helping to increase our following and brand awareness.
 
What: Help us spread our message and advocate via social media networks by creating content, sharing, commenting, and interacting with Story Tapestries and our collaborators.
 
Where & When: Anywhere, at any time - you can support our mission with a single click to like, follow, and share, and each action makes a difference!
 
Benefit to the Employee: By engaging with us through social media you are letting the world know you support an awesome organization that uses the arts to make sure every kid has access to tools that support their ability to learn, grow, and express themselves.

Why: If you love to write and have a knack with words, please contribute to our blog and make sure we are shouting from the rooftops about the youth we are working with and the incredible transformations they are making.
 
What: Interview teaching artists, educators, and youth who participate in our programs and highlight their stories. If qualitative analysis is your game, consider writing advocacy reports connecting our work to the latest in the field of arts education.
 
Where & When: Anywhere, at any time - Let your passion for composition tell the stories of youth who have fallen in love with learning and have found new ways to write their own futures.
 
Benefit to the Employee: Hone your writing skills by volunteering for a small, but mighty organization that is working overtime to make sure young people have the supplies and skills they need to succeed. Practice researching and interviewing by talking with our professional artists, educators, and youth about the impact of our programs on the community.

Thank you for your interest in volunteering with Story Tapestries. We will connect with you soon.