Team Kids Program

It’s all about the Kids!

Team Kids staff implement school-based service programs alongside police and firefighters to inspire students to help others.

It’s a beautiful thing when children discover the power they have to make a difference in someone else’s life – and in their communities.

While serving, students develop the values and skills that enable them to make positive choices in their own lives, while making a difference in the lives of others.

In Irvine, California, representatives from representatives from the Irvine Unified School District, local service agencies, the Irvine Police Department and the Orange County Fire Authority work alongside students to enhance community health and safety. In the process, students learn the value and strength generated through collaborative and mutually supportive community relationships.
 
While there are other outreach programs available to children, most provide limited services to small, select groups of students who have the resources—time, money and transportation—to participate. The Team Kids Challenge is open to all students at no charge. The entire school community is engaged. Together, students, teachers, principals, parents and community and civic leaders join forces, creating a win-win situation for both schools and communities.



The Team Kids Challenge is a month-long direct service-learning experience which challenges youth to meet certain participation and fund-raising goals to benefit other nonprofit agencies. Typically, representatives from local Police and Fire Departments, along with local college athletes, serve as role models & champions for kids who want to make a difference
 
The project is kicked off with a school-wide assembly that inspires students to become agents of change as they embark on a four-week program that allows them to take action to improve issues such as homelessness and hunger, tolerance and violence prevention, animals and environment, and health issues such as pediatric cancer prevention.
 
While all students participate in service projects, we place special emphasis on fifth and sixth grade students, who are invited to serve on the Team Kids Leadership Team. The TK Challenge serves as a vehicle to help students make healthy choices before entering junior high school, which is a critical time in youth development when students are most likely to experiment with high risk behaviors.
 
Typically 70 to 80 percent of these students volunteer to serve, and meet during their lunch recess once or twice each week. Team Kids staff and/or trained volunteers facilitate meetings for students and their peers, who organize younger students to plan school wide projects to benefit four community nonprofit causes, one for each week of the Challenge. The recipients of each of the challenge weeks (Families Forward, Southwest Community Center, Irvine Animal Shelter, and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles) help facilitate and deliver programs for each of the corresponding weeks by inspiring students to learn about their respective needs, providing containers necessary to collect donations of canned food, clothes, pet supplies and other items, and then picking up collected items.