As most people who live here know, Charlotte is a rapidly changing and growing city. Along with that tremendous growth comes plenty of newcomers to the city, many of them young professionals looking for something that will connect them to their peers and to the city. For me, participating in community service or causes dear to my heart allows me to give back to the city I have grown to love all while connecting with my peers in a deeper way.
My name is Isaac Oyer and I am the chair of the Community Involvement Committee for the Charlotte Alliance Young Professionals Board. For my day job, I’m on the Community Engagement team at Novant Health. You could say that I love giving back and providing opportunities for others to find their connection to the community. I truly believe that we all want to give back but we just don’t know how to sometimes. Community engagement and volunteering help us better understand the community, its needs, its aspirations. As young people’s voices as key decision makers in Charlotte grow, it is our responsibility to understand the community for which we are advocating.
The last two years on the Charlotte Alliance Young Professionals Board have been amazing. Coming out of the pandemic, community engagement events were some of our earliest ways to bring people together, face-to-face, and our connections with each other and community have only been further deepened. One of the main opportunities that we have throughout the year is working with Keep Charlotte Beautiful to adopt a street off of N. Tryon. Three times a year, members of the YPs come together to beautify the intersection of Arrowhead and N. Tryon. By helping to cultivate clean and safe spaces in our community, we hope to immediately improve the lives of those who use them on a regular basis and also to encourage those driving by to think twice before throwing trash out their window.
Each year we also decide on focus pillars for our service activities. This year’s pillars are environment and sustainability, mental health, early childhood education, and economic development and housing stability. These pillars become the basis for our volunteer opportunities throughout the year; this year, we’ve worked with Second Harvest Food Bank, Classroom Central, Promising Pages, and the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools Foundation.
During the pandemic, nonprofits lost countless hours of volunteer time that they desperately need to thrive in our community. The reality is that everyone has skills that can help nonprofits serve the community better and the individual benefits of volunteering are robust. Organizations like Share Charlotte help people find opportunities in the community whether it is a one-time opportunity, serving part time helping them with social media needs or other hurdles, or even serving on a nonprofit board. Every hour you can give truly makes a difference to our amazing Charlotte community. Get out there and connect with our community!
