Fort Atkinson, WI – August 14, 2020 – The United Way of Jefferson & North Walworth Counties is launching their first-ever Virtual Week of Caring to be held September 14th – 20th.
“Our 2020 Campaign is going to be the most unique yet challenging campaign I’ve had to run,” states Megan Hartwick, United Way executive director. “We know there will be folks who’ve supported our organization in the past who won’t be in a position to do so this year, and we also know these past six months have been really hard on our communities. So our United Way wanted to introduce a brand new event focused on spreading caring power around to everyone, while of course keeping everyone as healthy and safe as possible.”
The Virtual Week of Caring will consist of seven different small missions across the seven days of the week, beginning on Monday, September 14th. The missions will be as follows: Join our Mission (Monday), Praise a Community Worker (Tuesday), Thank a Business (Wednesday), Commit to Volunteering (Thursday), Advocate for a Cause (Friday), Lend Your Support (Saturday), and Practice Self-Care (Sunday). There are no set requirements for completing each mission, and there is no sign-up for registration fee for participating.
“We wanted to make participation in this week-long series as easy as possible,” Hartwick states. “We will be offering a lot of suggestions and information that will help people figure out what specific acts of caring will work best for them, but we also want community members to get creative and express themselves during these small missions. Mostly, we want people to remember that small, simple acts of kindness can have a huge ripple affect across communities. And I think we can all agree that our communities need as much caring power and support as possible right now.”
Any community member is able to participate in the Virtual Week of Caring. United Way is encouraging workplaces to join in and use it as a team building exercise, or for parents to engage their children and make it a fun family activity. The acts can be as small or as big as an individual determines, and can be something very quick or tasks that require a longer commitment. The one request from United Way, is that folks share their participation and encourage others to join.
“We want to see all of these amazing acts of caring and we want the participants to share their positive impact with others and encourage them to join in,” Hartwick states. “We have created specific hashtags for the week that we’d ask people to use anytime they post their participation on social media. We’d also love for United Way to be tagged in any postings so we can help share the information. But mostly, we want participants to find any way to share – text your friends, post something up in your break room at work, or email your family members. We want to see this have a grand impact on our communities.”
Full details for the Virtual Week of Caring, including instruction sheets for each individual day, hashtag details, Facebook images and more, can be found on the Virtual Week of Caring page on the United Way’s website – https://uwjnwc.com/events/week-of-caring/.
“We’ve put together a lot of details and marketing information to make it very easy for people to participate and to promote the week’s tasks,” Hartwick states. “I’ll be sharing my personal participation each day, as well as our board of directors’ involvement, because our United Way is fully committed to spreading caring power throughout our communities. And also because, at United Way, we see one of our main responsibilities as creating connections throughout our communities; connecting individuals to needed help and resources, connecting volunteers to organizations who could benefit from their time, connecting donors to causes and missions they care about, and now connecting the power of kindness and support to those who need it.”
To join in on the week’s events, people are encouraged to visit the United Way website and subscribe to their newsletter and to “like and follow” their Facebook page (@uwjnwc).
“We’re so excited about this brand new way to kick-off our 2020 Campaign,” Hartwick adds. “We’re launching this year’s campaign with a theme of ‘Now More Than Ever’ because we believe our United Way support is needed in our communities now more than ever, and we feel constant acts of caring are also needed, now more than ever.”
Anyone who would like more information on United Way can visit the website at www.uwjnwc.com or contact United Way at 920.563.8880 or [email protected].
