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Impact Alabama: A Student Service Initiative was incorporated in June 2004 as Alabama’s first nonprofit organization dedicated to developing and implementing substantive service-learning projects in coordination with more than twenty universities and colleges throughout the state. Impact presents a vision of Alabama in which its young citizens understand, appreciate, and engage actively in civic and public life—contributing their diverse talents to solve local and state problems, influence public policy, and pursue the common good.
Impact’s core staffing model relies on employing talented, intelligent, and socially conscious recent college graduates for one or two years following graduation. These staff members work as full-time, stipend-based volunteers in a model that allows Impact to produce high-quality results, cost-effectively.
Impact staff work in the organization’s four main initiatives:
FocusFirst provides a cost-effective direct response to the vision care problems of children who live in urban and rural communities throughout Alabama. Impact: Over the last five years, students have screened more than 59,000 children in all 67 counties across Alabama, with approximately 11.7% of the children failing the screenings and receiving subsidized follow-up care.
SaveFirst trains college, graduate, and law students to offer free tax preparation services, financial literacy information, and opportunities for savings and investments to low-income families, especially targeting those eligible for an Earned Income Tax Credit refund. Impact: SaveFirst is the largest EITC-focused volunteer tax initiative in the state. In 2009, SaveFirst volunteers prepared tax returns for more than 2,600 working families in Alabama—helping them to claim $4.7 million in refunds and saving them over $670,000 in commercial preparation fees.
Grantee Spotlight Continued
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Grant: $20,000 to support the SpeakFirst Program
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The Belk Foundation invested $20,000 in Impact Alabama’s SpeakFirst program in May 2011.
SpeakFirst aims to reinvigorate Birmingham’s inner city youth by engaging them in a competitive, multidisciplinary debate program enhanced by a comprehensive learning experience that includes standardized test preparation training, summer internships, and admissions and scholarship guidance from college counselors across the state.
SpeakFirst students, representing Birmingham City Schools, practice three hours a day, three days a week, and compete in monthly tournaments across the southeast. Their diligent practice has prepared them to compete against some of the top high schools in their city, state, and country.
The SpeakFirst citywide debate team reached several milestones in 2010, most notably being one of four teams to represent the state of Alabama at the 2010 National Debate Championship.
The first sixteen SpeakFirst graduates have secured $2.5 million in college scholarships. SpeakFirst has also established incredible partnerships with The University of Alabama, UAB, and UA Huntsville. Each of these institutions has committed to providing, in perpetuity, full, four-year academic scholarships, including tuition and fees, to Birmingham school students who complete at least three years of SpeakFirst.
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