SCHOOL-BASED WELLNESS

Embrace impacts the educational system by teaching underprivileged middle-school children in Title I Schools the importance of healthy lifestyle habits and cultural acceptance. By utilizing volunteer collegiate and professional athletes as well as volunteer college students majoring in health, wellness and public health, Embrace delivers aerobic exercise, nutrition education, cultural acceptance education and culture-specific healthy cooking classes for the children and their parents. Children are pre-tested in the areas of height, weight, body mass index (BMI), resting blood pressure, nutrition and cultural knowledge. Athletes are utilized to serve as volunteers and role models due to their natural ability to advocate for eating a well balanced diet, exercising regularly and excelling in a diverse environment.

    - To date, Embrace has assisted over 8000 middle school children, bringing about an average drop in Systolic Blood Pressure (top number) of 6 points and a 4 point drop in Diastolic Blood Pressure (bottom number)

    - 98% of the Children regularly receive A’s on the Nutrition Class post-test

SERVING THE HOMELESS

Embrace also has a direct impact on the daily lives of the homeless every week of the year. The homeless population in San Diego is the epitome of cultural diversity. With over 7,500 chronically or permanently homeless members of our population in need of daily assistance, Embrace does its part to address those daily needs by serving the homeless 3 days per week year-round.

Through corporate sponsorships, grants, private donations (monetary and in-kind) and a 'soul connection' with the San Diego Food Bank, Embrace utilizes student and lay volunteers to deliver healthy food and bottled water to people from all walks of life with love, acceptance and compassion. Their 'GIV MAS' (give more) goal is to mobilize volunteers to deliver healthy meals 7 days a week to over 50,000 people each year.

By utilizing multi-cultural volunteers to serve a multi-cultural population in need through the distribution of healthy meals, Embrace adheres to its mission by creating opportunities for social and physical wellness to bring about "A Healthier San Diego®."

In 2009, Embrace served over 20,000 meals to civilians and veterans in need while college student and adult volunteers logged over 10,000 hours in the community.

STUDENT VOLUNTEER MODEL

Embrace distinguishes itself from other nonprofit organizations by serving as a student volunteer broker to provide assistance to other non profits and city council members, while ensuring that the students have the opportunity to receive academic credit toward graduation. Our model is based on a simple community-based supply-demand formula.

San Diego is home to tens of thousands of students, studying various disciplines, that desire to improve the community and need community outreach hours to graduate. This ‘supply’ variable of the formula is perpetual.

Nonprofit organizations and city council members devote their lives to solve a plethora of perpetual community issues. These issues continue to fester due to, in large part, a lack of people power, funding and fresh ideas. This 'demand' variable of the formula is also perpetual.

Embrace serves as priest, rabbi and minister that weds student supply to community demand by connecting high schools, colleges and universities to nonprofit organizations, for-profit companies and City Hall. By matching students with a particular academic discipline to organizations/entities with a need for their skill sets, Embrace creates an environment for our young leaders to gain valuable experience and an appreciation for the community as they prepare to enter the workforce.

Through tax-deductible donations from organizations, companies and districts in need, Embrace places student volunteers to assist these entities while they assist and work for the community. By ensuring that students have the opportunity to earn academic credit for hours worked, this replicable model creates a symbiotic relationship between community, higher education, government, the private sector and the nonprofit sector that does not currently exist.

COMMUNITY EVENTS

The program routinely provides enrichment experiences for underprivileged youth by conducting Wellness Workshops that include amateur and professional athletes as role models as well as tickets to college and professional sporting events. Team sports are a great example of diverse individuals excelling together as a unit, and they also set a great example to kids regarding healthy lifestyle choices. Kids need to see their older peers eating right, exercising regularly and possessing a diverse group of friends.

Embrace partners with the SDSU Office of Diversity and SDSU Associated Students to conduct food and blanket drives to assist the less fortunate and the homeless. The drives consist of students collecting nonperishable food items and blankets for homeless civilians and veterans, culminating with the students handing out the blankets to the homeless, feeding the homeless through the Embrace program or donating the food to the San Diego Food Bank.

GIV MAS: PHILANTHROPY AND SCHOLARSHIPS

Embrace is a truly unique nonprofit organization in that it provides services and financial assistance to other nonprofit organizations as well as students. "We wholeheartedly believe in sharing the blessings that our organization has received," states Embrace CEO Sean Sheppard. "If a community becomes aware of and utilizes the services we provide due to exposure we receive from our philanthropic work, everyone benefits."

The organization identifies nonprofits in need and provides modest donations in exchange for community exposure.

Embrace CEO Sean Sheppard has taken giving to yet another level through the creation of the SDSU Sean Sheppard Community Service Scholarship Fund. Sheppard, an SDSU alumnus, provides $1,000 scholarships to low income, high achieving students that have had prior community service experience. Scholarship awardees receive $1,000 to pay for books in exchange for a semester of community service. The scholarship allows the students, the community and the university to benefit simultaneously. The community will always need volunteers, there will always be students to serve and students will always be in need of financial assistance.